Joseph Bakare
Bulk electricity consumers in Nigeria are opting out of the country’s fragile grid system which is largely inefficient and unpredictable without full assurances of electricity delivery.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), which under stand the potential impact of the poor grid situation, has issued licenses to twenty-four bulk electricity consumers to disconnect from the Nigerian national grid.
They now have the license to generate their own electricity in 2024, while 22 others obtained licences for off-grid generation.
In total, the 46 entities would generate up to 289 megawatts of electricity, as NERC said in its report that various companies and institutions got NERC’s approval to generate captive power last year.
According to the report, the Commission issues captive power generation permits to entities that aim to own and maintain power plants for generating power for their use and not for sale to a third party.
Under the arrangement a total of 138 megawatts of electricity would be generated by the 22 bulk electricity consumers.
The Companies so far exited the grid are SweetCo Foods Limited with 1.50MW; African Steel Mills with 20MW; Armilo Plastics, 1.13MW; Royal Engineered Stones, 4MW; West African Ceramics Limited, 10MW; Ro-Marong Nigeria Ltd, 4.40MW, and Psaltry International Company Limited, 1.10MW, MTN Nigeria Communication Limited got approvals for 15.94MW in total; University of Abuja got 3MW; University of Calabar & Teaching Hospital was secured 7MW; and University of Agriculture Michael Okpara, Umudike, 3MW;
The NERC has blamed the shift from the national grid on power fluctuations and low supply.and that grid frequency is a crucial power quality parameter that industrial customers are particularly concerned about due to the sensitivity of their heavy-duty machinery.
It stated that “in industrial production assembly lines, the machines are designed to operate only within pre-set frequency tolerance limits and therefore often have a low tolerance for frequency fluctuations.