UPDATED: Nigeria generates highest ever electricity in its history

Nigeria generated 5,801 megawatts of electricity on Tuesday, the highest ever by the country whose citizens grapple with incessant power outages.

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The head of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, Sule Abdulaziz, disclosed this at the State House, Abuja, on Thursday.

“…for the first time in our nation’s history, the power sector recorded a new and unprecedented peak generation of 5,801.84 megawatts of electricity on March 4, 2025, at 21:15 hours,” he said

Mr Abdulaziz said his state-owned TCN successfully transmitted all the generated electricity.

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“The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) efficiently evacuated this bulk power to distribution load centers nationwide.”

He said this unprecedented feat is the result of the hard work and dedication of our engineers, in the generation, transmission and distribution companies of the power sector value chain.

Background

In November 2013, the federal government privatised all power generation and 11 distribution companies, with the government retaining the ownership of the transmission company. This was to improve efficiency in the sector.

On Thursday, Mr Abdulaziz explained the numerous TCN transmission projects completed in the last two years and new ones currently underway as well as the 8,500MW current evacuation capability of the company.

He said in less than two years from now, the TCN will conveniently evacuate 10,000 megawatts generated power.

Speaking on the achievements of the commission, he said the major breakthroughs is the installation and commissioning into service of sixty-six number power transformers.

“We have equally built new transmission substations, and re-conductored transmission line projects among others. Some of the projects were executed under the World Bank sponsored projects which are geared towards increasing TCN’s capacity by 9000 MVA.”

Currently, he said projects amounting to 6000 MVA have been completed and connected to the grid, including the Rimin Zakara substation in New Kano.

He noted that the World Bank is also funding the upgrade of some brownfield substation projects.

“Another donor agency projects in TCN are the AFD funded projects that have completed five transmission substations in Abuja, two have been energised. AFDB is also executing the new Kano-Kaduna 330kV DC transmission line with 330KV Substation at Zaria and 132kV substation at Jaji, Kaduna State simultaneously amongst others.

“The federal government power projects supervising the execution of the SIEMENS project have supplied a total of 10 mobile substations out of which 7 have been installed,” he added.

According to him, another ten transformers of various ratings were also installed in the transmission network and connected to the grid.

He further explained that the federal government projects have further contributed to the increase in TCN’s capacity as the projects are handed over to TCN on completion.

“The federal government projects already executed added 1350MW to the grid. Our progress is also evident in the 76.47 per cent reduction in grid disturbances over the past five years.

“However, to enable us to manage the grid in the absence of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) in place, we developed the Generation Load Drop Sensitivity (GLDS) system, which detects and responds to sudden drops in power generation, preventing cascading failures. Additionally, all our substations have now been fully digitised and automated,” he added.

In order to reduce downtime and improve efficiency, he said, “we undertook a comprehensive restocking of TCN’s central stores. We had the largest stockpile of transmission equipment in TCN’s history, including 22 power transformers and other accessories, most of which have been moved to various project sites.

“Presently, we have 6, 150 MVA and 5No 100 MVA transformers, 132KV Isolators, 110V DC Battery banks, haulage trucks, 132KV circuit breakers, current transformers, and voltage transformers, among others in our central store in Lagos,” he said.