OpeOluwani Akintayo
Lagos — Despite the inability to meet the power needs of its over 200 million populace, Nigeria in 2019, sold over two million megawatts of electricity to Benin and Niger Republic in 2019, findings by SweetcrudeReports has shown.
Statistics obtained from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, NBS, and analysed by our reporter, showed that a total of 33,448,633 MWh of energy was generated by power stations in the year under review- out of which 2, 327, 151 megawatts were sold to both countries.
A breakdown of the cross border electricity transactions showed that Benin and Niger Republic were supplied a total of 1,278,344MWh and 1,048,807MWh of electricity respectively.
Benin Republic got 188, 583 megawatts in January, 159, 827 in February, 167, 138MW in March, 159, 690 in April, 137, 031MW in May, 122, 725MW in June, 121, 807MW in July, 52, 077MW in August, 57, 036MW in September, 35, 453MW in October, 40, 499MW in November and 36, 478MW in December.
On the other hand, Niger Republic received 62, 949.5MW in January, 65, 406.6MW in February, 89, 642.8MW in March, 93, 370.3MW in April, 92, 372MW in May, 87, 262.3MW in June, 94, 928.3MW in July, 93, 107.9MW in August, 102, 821.6MW in September, 106, 897.8MW in October, 90, 497.4MW in November, and 69,551.1MW in December.
Experts have said Nigeria needs generation of over 30,000MW per day to attain power sufficiency.
According to the document, privatised GenCos generated 19,692,683 MWh, IPP GenCos generated 7,798,253 MWh while the NIPP GenCos generated 5,957,697MWh in 2019.
However, Egbin recorded the highest energy generation with 3,786,313MWh accounting for 11.32%, while Alaoji NIPP recorded the lowest with 209,453MWh accounting for 0.63% of total energy generated in 2019.
Total Energy sent out by GenCos in 2019 stood at 32,799,114MWh.
Privatised GenCos sent out 19,233,151 MWh, IPP GenCos sent out 7,648,700 MWh while the NIPP GenCos sent out 5,917,262 MWh.
Energy consumed by the eleven DisCos in 2019 stood at 28,026,503 MWh- Ikeja DisCo recorded the highest energy consumption with 4,087,971 MWh accounting for 14.95% while Yola Disco recorded the lowest with 1,122,534MWh accounting for 4% of total energy consumed in 2019.
A document by the Association of Power Generation Companies, APGC had said that available generation capacity, which was 3,427.5MW as at privatisation in 2013, had increased by 138.34 percent to 8,169MW, however, the Gencos are able to recover just 4,741.5MW due to system constraints.