Despite 86 million Nigerians being without electricity, DisCos rejected 114.53 MW/h in the second quarter of 2023

Despite the fact that 86 million Nigerians lack access to electricity, according to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, DisCos in the country turned down 114.53 megawatt-hours of electricity every hour from generation companies.

The latest report from NERC for the second quarter of 2023 made this disclosure.

A total of 114.53 MWh/h of load was rejected on average by Nigeria’s 11 power distribution firms, according to the analysis, which showed that all of them accepted less electricity than their contracted capabilities.

Despite electricity consuming N135 billion in Q2 2023, this load rejection happened as some parts of Nigeria experienced power outages.

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The 11 Discos offloaded an average of 3,251.31 MWh/h of energy during the study period, whereas their partially contracted capacity was 3,365.84 MWh/h.

The Gencos (generation companies) are guaranteed to receive capacity payments as compensation for their availability under this framework, which is in line with international best practises for long-term contract-based power procurement.

“To stop this practise, the commission includes load offtake as a major statistic in its KPI Order—Order on Performance Monitoring Framework (NERC/316-326/2022), given to Discos with effect from October 2022.

The NERC stated that “the order provides that persistent load non-offtake to certain thresholds may result in regulatory actions against the management of the Discos.”

The statement said, “In 2023/Q2, the average energy offtake by Discos at their trading points was 3,251.31 MWh/h, and it shows a decline of -218.82 MWh/h (-6.31 per cent) as compared to 3,470.13 MWh/h offtake in 2023/Q1.

“All the discos took less than their available PCC during the quarter, with the exception of Eko Disco, which recorded an offtake performance of 116.90% and will benefit from lower wholesale energy costs.”