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Indications of possible blackout in the country have emerged as the electricity Generation Companies (GenCos) threatened to shut down their plants over recurrent directives by the National Control Centre (NCC) to generate below optimal level.
The Executive Secretary of the Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC), Dr. Joy Ogaji, made this known in a document yesterday.
Ogaji attributed the low efficiency in the power system to the load shedding and power fluctuations in the country.
“All thermal power plants, like the gas turbines (GTs), are designed to operate optimally and efficiently at base load.
“Operations of these gas turbines at operating points, far away from their base-loads implies a reduction in efficiency or in other words an increase in consumption of gas by as much as 15-20 percent, a cost not recognized by NBET (Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading) nor captured in the MYTO (Multi-year Tariff Order).
“This reduction in operating efficiency is in addition to the huge fatigue damage leading to higher cost meted out on turbines due to ramping up and down over wide temperature swings.
“The grid cannot conveniently take over 4500MW without rejecting load. Generation above 5,000 MW may either be lost or rejected either by the Distribution Companies (DisCos) or the Transmission Service Provider’s (TSP) inabilities largely due to infrastructural challenges like line cuts and transformer faults and unavailability thereby causing grid frequency to be very high.
“The only sane thing to do and save the sector from collapsing is for GENCOs to shut down until when the networks (transmission and distribution) are efficient enough to take power and fully pay for both outstanding and current liabilities to GenCos,” he said.
Source: RipplesNigeria
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