Following the over N7 trillion injected into the wobbly power market since the inception of the Muhammadu Buhari administarion, Managing Director of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Mr Mohammed Gur, has suggested that the industry should  push  government out of the power infrastructure for it to work. 

Speaking with newsmen in Abuja, during the public hearing for extraordinary tariff review, Gur said that the industry is not working and the only way to make it work is to remove government from the market.

“We have problem of gas because the market is not working. As Nigerians we have to take a decision and remove the government out of the market and let it be driven as a sustainable industry without government. We need to take that decision. Otherwise we will continue to pump money into this sector and the sector will not work because the sector is supposed to be governed by contract so that people who cannot perform can be liquidated based on contract. If we cannot do that we will continue to waste time,” he said.

On the load rejection by DisCos, Gur revealed that National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has taken a major step to ensure that DisCos that drop load are punished.

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“NERC has done an order that rejecting DisCos will pay for capacity. This is going to address that problem. Before, DisCos could drop load and increase load  and they were  not penalised.  NERC is now  putting this structure to ensure that there is capacity charge for those that refuse to take load. Very soon you will see that this load rejection will be a thing of the past,” he assured.

The MD used the occasion to clarify a report which was wrongly reported that TCN submitted case for extraordinary review of tariff and it was turned down by NERC.

“You know there was a report last week that indicated that TCN submitted case for extraordinary review of tariff and it was turned down by NERC. That is not a correct position. We did not submit report for extraordinary tariff review. What we requested for is a provision for auxiliary service. Auxiliary service is a service that is supposed to be provided by the market to ensure that we have a stable grid. And one of them is what we call secondary reserve. A secondary reserve is also called spinning reserve. The secondary reserve is supposed to take care of instability that cannot be taken care of by the primary reserve. When we came in to TCN there was no primary reserve. A primary reserve is the one to take care of demand and supply so that all the generators connected to the grid in line with the grid code will put their machine on what is called free governor mode.

As at today I am happy to tell you that apart from three small generators on the grid we have informed them that they are due for disconnection. All generators are on free governor in Nigeria which is a significant achievement. The next thing we need to have is secondary reserve. A secondary reserve is to take care of instability that cannot be taken care of by the primary reserve. What are these instabilities? If for example, a generator that is carrying 300 mw for example goes off maybe due to  fire, the secondary reserve is supposed to support the grid so that demand and supply will balance.