Amid shortfalls in power supply, the power sector last week experienced cumulative revenue losses amounting to N7.603 billion. The revenue losses witnessed within six days between June 18 and 23rd, were attributed to constraints in gas supply as well as transmission and distribution lines failures, high frequency and frequency management constraints, according to the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) statistics.
The statistics were obtained by The Guardian from the Presidential Advisory Power Team (PAPT), presided by the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo.
The implications of the gas constraints include shortage of gas for the Generation Companies (GenCos) to power the turbines and consequent under utilisation of GenCos capacity.
Furthermore, due to lines constrains, available power generated cannot be completely evacuated by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), while the transmitted megawatts cannot be distributed by the Distribution Companies (DisCos) to the end users.
The consequences of these are epileptic electricity supply to homes and businesses and attendant huge revenue losses to the sector. Meanwhile, the average power sent out per day within the period under review ranged between 3,195MWh/hour and 3,715MWh/hour, with total reported gas constraints of 10,432MW and line constraints of 928MW.
Also, the reported high frequency constraint was put at 2360MW while the frequency management constraint due to the loss of DisCo feeders was 2137.5MW.
According to the statistics, on June 18th, average power sent out was 3443MWh/hour (up by 657MWh/h), gas constraint was 1770MW, line constraint 147.5MW with high frequency constraint of 845.5MW, leading to estimated revenue losses of about N1.33 billion.
The loss of DisCO feeders as a result of heavy rainfall leading to frequency management was identified as the leading cause of the generation reduction across the grid.
On June 19th, the average power sent out was 3,361MWh/hour (down by 82MWh/h), gas constraint 1642MW, line constraint was 147.5MW with high frequency constraint of 1013MW and revenue loss estimated at N1.345billion.
Similarly, on June 20th, average power sent out was 3,307MWh/hour (down by 54MWh/h), gas constraint 1733MW, line constraint 147.5MW with high frequency constraint of 510.5MW and revenue of N1.15billion.
On June 21, average power sent out was 3,307MWh/hour (up by 1MWh/h), gas constraint 1733MW, line constraint 147.5MW while frequency management constraint due to the loss of DisCo feeders was 1340MW, with about N1.533billion lost in revenues.
Likewise on June 22, average power sent out was 3,195MWh/hour (down by 113MWh/h), gas constraint 1777MW, line constraint 223.8MW, frequency management constraint 342.5MW and revenue loss of N1.125billion.
On June 23rd, average power sent out was 3,715MWh/hour (up by 521MWh/h), gas constraint 1777MW, line constraint 114.2MW, while management constraint was 455MW and revenue lost was N1.13billion.
