Amid Nigeria’s Electricity Supply Crisis, 68% of Power Plants Remain Idle
Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
Amid Nigeria’s persistent electricity supply crisis, new operational data has revealed that roughly 68 per cent of the country’s installed power generation capacity remained idle in February, highlighting the deep structural constraints limiting electricity supply to homes and businesses.
A factsheet released by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) showed that Nigeria’s grid-connected power plants have a combined installed capacity of 13,625 megawatts (MW). However, the average capacity available for dispatch to the national grid during the month stood at only 4,384MW.
This represents a Plant Availability Factor (PAF) of 32 per cent, meaning that 9,241MW or approximately 68 per cent of the country’s installed generation capacity was unavailable for dispatch during the period.
The data, which covered 28 grid-connected generation plants, illustrated the wide gap between Nigeria’s theoretical electricity generation capacity and the power actually available to the national grid.
According to the regulator, the 4,384MW available generation capacity recorded in February represented an 11 per cent decline compared with January 2026, indicating worsening operational constraints across several power stations.
Despite the limited capacity available to the grid, the report showed that most of the operational plants were running close to their maximum available output. The regulator reported that average hourly electricity generation in February stood at 4,102 megawatt-hours per hour (MWh/h). This represents a 7 per cent decline in generation compared with January, reflecting the reduced availability of generating units during the period.
However, the report showed that the Load Factor which measures how much of the available capacity was actually utilised reached 93 per cent, indicating that almost all operational generation capacity was deployed to produce electricity.
Besides, the regulator noted that the 93 per cent load factor represents a 3 percentage point improvement compared with January, suggesting that the power plants that remained operational were utilised more intensively.
In effect, while 4,384MW was available for dispatch, the grid produced an average of 4,102MW, leaving a reserve margin of only 282MW, or about 6.4 per cent of available capacity.
In practical terms, such a narrow reserve margin significantly reduces the system’s ability to absorb sudden generation losses or respond to demand fluctuations.
Beyond generation constraints, the data also revealed instability in key operational parameters of the national grid, particularly voltage and frequency stability, which are critical indicators of system reliability.
On voltage performance, the factsheet showed that the monthly average lower grid voltage dropped to 302 kilovolts (kV), while the monthly average upper grid voltage reached 351kV. Both figures fell outside the prescribed grid operating band of 313.50kV to 346.50kV.
This means the lower voltage recorded during the month was 11.5kV below the minimum allowable limit, while the upper voltage exceeded the maximum threshold by 4.5kV. Operating outside these limits can reduce transmission efficiency and increase the risk of equipment damage or grid disturbances.
In the same vein, grid frequency performance also deviated from acceptable operating standards during the month. The data showed that the monthly average lower grid frequency was recorded at 49.28 hertz (Hz), while the monthly average upper grid frequency reached 50.69Hz. These figures fall outside the acceptable grid frequency band of 49.75Hz to 50.25Hz.
Taken together, the operational indicators suggest that Nigeria’s electricity system operated under tight supply conditions during February, with limited generation reserves and persistent stability challenges. A key contributor to the low availability of generation capacity, it was learnt, was the recurring shortage of natural gas supplied to power plants. Nigeria’s electricity system is heavily dependent on thermal generation, with gas-fired plants accounting for over 75 per cent of installed generation capacity on the national grid, while hydropower provides the remaining share.
Thermal power plants rely on steady gas supply to sustain operations. However, gas deliveries to power stations have frequently been disrupted by pipeline constraints, infrastructure vandalism, maintenance outages and financial disputes within the gas-to-power value chain.
Gas producers are also owed substantial sums by power generation companies, many of which struggle to recover their costs due to liquidity challenges in the electricity market. The debt overhang has discouraged some gas suppliers from expanding deliveries to power plants, further constraining generation output.
Beyond fuel shortages, other factors affecting plant availability include aging equipment, mechanical faults, maintenance shutdowns and transmission constraints that sometimes prevent available power from being fully evacuated to the grid.
Although the country has more than 13,000MW of installed generation capacity, actual electricity output has historically fluctuated between 3,000MW and 5,000MW, far below what the system could theoretically produce if a larger share of plants were operational.
