Nigerian Power Grid Collapses Again

The Minister for Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has expressed readiness to increase power generation in the country to 20,000 Megawatt of electricity in the next three years.

Daily Trust reports that the country currently generates an average of 4,000MW even though it has an estimated 13,000MW generation capacity.

This is coming on the heels of another power grid collapse yesterday that led to power generation dropping to 42.7MW.

The collapse was the third in the last five days.

But Adelabu during an address at the ongoing Nigeria Energy conference said 85% of the generated power needs to be distributed to electricity consumers to achieve liquidity in the sector.

While acknowledging energy as a critical aspect of Nigeria's economy, he said no meaningful economic growth can be achieved without energy.

"If we cannot transmit 80 to 85% of the generated power to customers, then we are wasting investments. We must invest in metering technology, if we can eliminate the 8 million metering gap in Nigeria and come up with technology to ensure that collections are monitored, and we can collect up to 90% of power distributed, of course, liquidity is assured in this country.

He vowed to change the narratives in the power sector which has been beset with several challenges.

This article originally appeared on Daily Trust.

Image via POWER Magazine.