Lagos — The Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, has said its grid network has the capacity of 8,100 megawatts, MW, even as it continues to work towards completing ongoing projects to further increase its capacity.
The company disclosed this as it announced that it was working to expand the national power grid as part of efforts to improve power supply in the country.
The company said the capacity of the national grid has improved under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, especially with the record of four all-time peak in the sector in 2020, and two recorded in January 2021, so far.
TCN General Manager, Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah, who disclosed this, clarified that the National Control Centre, NCC, an arm of TCN, is responsible for ensuring grid stability and its dispatch instructions are guided by the grid code, which it strictly adheres to, with clear understanding of consequences to the nation’s grid.
Despite the role played by NCC, she clarified that TCN does not distribute electricity to electricity consumers and cannot also switch off consumer feeders. Its jurisdiction on the network is from 330 kilovolt, kV, to 132kV power lines, she said.
“The fact is that electricity cannot be stored; therefore, power generation, transmission and distribution occur simultaneously. What determines what is put on the grid, is what the distribution companies are ready to off-take, this equally regulates what the generator would generate, which is why the Discos are required to nominate what they would off-take a day ahead.
TCN working to further expand in-country grid
“It is important to note that whatever happens on the downstream network, impacts on transmission and generators.
“That notwithstanding, it would be wrong to attribute most localised outages and load-shedding of consumers feeders to TCN. Discos can only off take what is generated, while Gencos can only generate what Discos can off take. Each of the 11 Discos has its own challenges which may necessitate outage in certain places per time,” she said.
