Drop in Electricity Generation Not Caused by Gas Supply Shortage—NNPC

By Dipo Olowookere

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on Wednesday emphasized the availability of enough gas for power generation noting that the recent drop in electricity generation was as a result of some factors outside its control.

The NNPC stated that as critical partners in the electricity generation matrix, it is willing to work with other stakeholder to resolve the temporary setback in line with the Federal Government’s aspiration for the power sector.

The nation’s power generation dropped by 712MW on Monday, August 13, 2018, compared with the previous day’s generation as output from all the Hydro Power Plants and some gas-fired stations, including Egbin in Lagos, suffered decline.

The NNPC in a statement by its Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs, Mr Ndu Ughamadu, informed that the drop in power generation could have been triggered mainly by the continuous rejection of load by the distribution companies (Discos) as a result of frequency management.

The corporation said despite improved gas supply which picked up after a temporary setback due to a hitch at one of its Joint Venture partners’ operated fields, the gas grid was still experiencing low offtake by the generating companies (Gencos) as a result of load rejection by the Discos.

It explained that the prevailing significant drop in power generation was mainly due to three factors namely: a reduction in power generation by the three Hydro Power Plants by 434MW due to frequency management issues arising from continuous rejection of load by the Discos; a drop in power generation by some gas fired power plants generation by 278MW mainly due to frequency management as a result of rejection of load by Discos; and the shut-down of the Gbarain Power Plant due to a trip-off at the Alaoji/Owerri 132KV lines 1 and 2.

The NNPC further explained that power evacuation still remains a major challenge across the value chain with an average of 1800MW unutilized generation capacity weekly due to frequency management and line constraints.

“There is an urgent need to fix the challenges with power evacuation for significant improvement in power generation across the nation,” the Corporation stated.