Power Supply Challenges in Nigeria: a Summary

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The state of power supply in Nigeria can be summed up in two words “Up Nepa” and i hate it that my children in 2019 are still shouting it. These words illustrate the erratic state of supply where chants accompany the lighting of a bulb. For many Nigerians, constant electricity supply only means one thing; it is the end of the month and the electricity bill is soon to be delivered.
Despite huge investments in the sector, constant power supply continues to be elusive as all sub-sectors of the industry – generation, transmission, and distribution – battle consistently with challenges.  In this article, we will be highlighting some of the common challenges faced in each sub-sector of the electricity supply industry.

Generation

Even though many would agree that generation is not the weakest link presently, there is no denying that our capacity at 12,000MW does not meet the demand of the estimated 200 million Nigerians.
One major issue facing power generators is gas availability. Many of our power plants are gas-powered (85% of installed generation capacity) but despite our abundant gas reserves, supply to power plants tends to be challenging.

Transmission

Power transmission has seen gains in recent years.
Despite the current wheeling capacity being higher than operational generation capacity, more needs to be done to ensure the stability of the grid. The transmission grid needs much more upgrade to appropriate standards that can meet current demand. The inefficiency of the grid has seen transmission losses of 19% in the first half of the year.
Over the past weekend, the grid collapsed twice in 4 hours. There is a need for “spinning reserve” to provide power when there is a disruption in the grid.  A spinning reserve is an extra generation capacity that is online but carrying no load. It should respond usually within 10 minutes of a generation or transmission outage. As of June 30, 2019, the recorded spinning reserve was 0MW whereas it should be at least 380MW (10% of the evacuated power – 3,810MW).

Distribution

Many would argue that this is the weakest link in the power supply chain. The challenges faced in the distribution sub-sector range from distribution (network inefficiency) and collection losses (as a result of electricity theft, inaccurate billing) to operational challenges.
In the first half of the year, average power received by the distribution companies was 6,931GWh. Only 80 per cent of this received energy was billed to consumers of which revenue collection was 65 per cent. All these losses add up to an aggregate technical commercial and collection loss of 47.23 per cent.
For a country that produces so little power, it is quite frustrating to learn that quite a sizeable fraction of the generated electricity is being lost per generation cycle. All these challenges in each sub-sector contribute to the general lack of liquidity in the sector and have staggering impacts that trap the entire electricity market in a cycle of under-performance.

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