The perennial challenge of ‘load rejection’ by electricity Distribution Companies (Discos) in Nigeria continued in the third quarter of 2024, with the power distributors failing to offtake almost 10 per cent of available generation during the period.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) which released the data in its Quarterly Report for Q3, however stated that despite declining to evacuate the energy to Nigerian houses and businesses, it was still an improvement compared to the volume rejected previously.
Specifically, NERC put the energy offtake performance of the 12 Discos at 90.47 per cent, although it still trumped the figure for Q2 by 8.81 per cent.
Even though NERC has always threatened to enforce appropriate regulatory actions against Discos that fail to meet the key performance targets for electricity offtake, the power distribution companies have enunciated several reasons why they reject available supply despite obvious power shortages nationwide.
Some of them include: underpayment by customers; overloaded transformers, technical limitations or even transmission constraints involving a breaker issue, which may make it difficult to get enough electricity from the source to a specific location.
