Mkpoikana Udoma
Port Harcourt — 28 grid-connected power plants across Nigeria generated an average of 5,514 megawatts of electricity for dispatch into the national grid throughout August 2025, reflecting a marginal decrease of 1% from the 5,577MW recorded in July 2025.
However, the national grid during the month was only able to load 4,106MWh/h on average, indicating that only 74% of available generation capacity was utilized.
Data on the operational performance of power plants released by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, highlighted that the 28 plants achieved only a 40% availability factor despite their cumulative installed capacity of 13,625MW.
The report showed that larger power plants, including Egbin ST, Delta GS, Kainji, Shell’s Afam VI, Zungeru, Odukpani, Shiroro, Jebba, Okpai, Azura IPP, and Geregu, contributed 4271 MW on average, accounting for 77.5% of the total energy generated in August.
Egbin 1 and Zungeru 1 emerged as the highest power producers, with average outputs of 690MW and 681MW respectively, while Delta followed with 507MW.
Smaller power plants such as Afam I-V, Sapele ST, Olorunsogo NIPP, Omotosho NIPP, Sapele GT NIPP, Ihovbor NIPP, Geregu NIPP, Omotosho, Olorunsogo, Ibom Power, Rivers NIPP, Omoku, Trans Amadi, Igbafo, Taopex Energy, Mepp, and Dadin Kowa generated a combined average of 1,240MW, representing 22.3l5% of the total energy output.
However, some plants performed below capacity. For instance, Trans Amadi 1 and Sapele Steam produced just 6MW and 16MW on average, while Alaoji 1, Ibom Power 1 and Rivers 1 failed to generate any power during the period, despite their installed capacities of 500MW, 190 and 180MW.
NERC’s data also revealed that the average hourly load capacity into the national grid from the 28 power plants was 4,106MWh/h during the review period, further underscoring the gap between installed capacity and actual performance in Nigeria’s power sector.
