Fresh worries as 20 electricity plants face hurdles

Performance cripples to 33% as only 7 plants in good condition 
Over 20 of the 27 electricity plants on the Nigerian electricity grid are in shambles as some of the plants are producing only about 0.2 per cent of their installed capacity.

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) in its third quarter report for the year showed that troubles await the aging plants, leading to recurring maintenance, even as liquidity and gas constraints kept the plants below par.

Although Nigeria, which had projected a 40,000 megawatts of electricity generation by this year has repeatedly described the generation segment of the electricity market as the strongest in the power sector, even though only about 4,211 megawatts of the 12, 643 megawatts of the installed capacity was produced in the third quarter of the year.

Only Azura, Paras, Dodin Kowa hydro, Jebba, Shiroro, Okpai, and Rivers IPP produced 50 per cent of their installed capacity while the rest performed between 44 per cent to 0.2 per cent to bring the average capacity of the country’s plant to meagre 33 per cent.

In the third quarter of 2023, the overall plant availability factor of all grid-connected plants was 33.31 per cent, this means more than two-third of the installed capacity in the NESI was not available. Only seven plants had an availability factor greater than 50 per cent. Azura IPP plant had the highest availability factor of 90.04 per cent while Alaoji NIPP had the lowest availability factor of 0.2 per cent,” NERC report said.

According to NERC, the largest driver of plant unavailability was mechanical outages, adding that it is a major problem that has plagued the market, arising from the age of many of the plants. The average plant in the market is 21 years old.

The report noted that liquidity challenges at the upstream segment of the industry which results in underpayment of GenCo invoices created constraints for the plants.

“Without sufficient cash flows, GenCos are unable to maintain their generation units which leads to extended outages. The liquidity challenges have also prevented operators of the privatised generation assets from recovering capacity which had been inoperable prior to privatisation,” NERC said.

It also blamed the lack of reliable gas supply to the plants due to gas infrastructure constraints on the national gas network and the absence of fully effective Gas Supply.

Meanwhile, about 126 electricity-related accidents were recorded between January and September 2023, going by the report.

There were 72 injuries and 79 fatalities in the period as illegal connections, unsafe conditions/acts, wire snap, vandalism, explosions, and electrocution fuel the incidents.