The amount of electricity generated by the nation’s power plants fell below 3,000 megawatts on Friday, dropping by over 600MW in 24 hours.
The power stations were forced to either shut down some of their units or reduce their generation largely as a result of low load demand by distribution companies, worsening the blackout being experienced by millions of customers across the country.
Total power generation dropped to 2,915.6MW as of 6am on Friday from 3,590MW on Thursday, data from the Nigerian Electricity System Operator showed.
A report from the system operator showed that a total of 2,401.9MW generation capacity was idle on Wednesday as a result of low load demand by Discos while 115MW was unutilised because of line constraints.
Nine power plants, including five built under the National Integrated Power Project, did not generate any megawatt of electricity as of 6am on Wednesday.
The affected plants are Afam IV & V, Alaoji NIPP, Olorunsogo NIPP, Omotosho NIPP, Gbarain NIPP, Sapele NIPP, AES IPP and ASCO IPP and Trans-Amadi IPP.
The nation generates the bulk of its electricity from gas-fired power plants, while output from hydropower plants makes up about 30 per cent of the total.
The system operator put the nation’s installed generation capacity at 12,910.40MW; available capacity at 7,652.60MW; transmission wheeling capacity at 8,100MW; and the peak generation ever attained at 5,375MW.