5th March, 2019
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), has accused Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) of rejecting about 40 per cent of electricity wheeled to the company at TCN’s substations in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
TCN’s General Manager, Transmission Services, Mr Sulaiman Mahmud made the accusation in an interview with journalists on Monday in Abuja.
Mahmud said that complaints of inadequate power supply by consumers in the FCT and AEDC’s franchise areas was not a challenge of transmission.
He said AEDC was not fully taking delivery of the electricity transmitted in its sub-stations.
Meanwhile, consumers in FCT satellite towns of Kubwa, Nyanya, Karu, Karshi, Orozo, Lugbe among others have been grappling with the challenge of epileptic power supply in the last two months.
The challenges ranged from load-shedding, limited supply, non-supply for days, outrageous estimated billings, and overloaded transformers among others.
“At the Karu transmission substation with an installed capacity of 2×60 MVA, basically, what we are experiencing is load rejection from AEDC, because we have 96 MW from the two transformers.
“Incidentally, from what we are recording for the past one week, you see that the transformers are just carrying 31 MW, sometimes up to 48MW in some instances,’’ Mahmud said.
He said AEDC was only taking between 35MW to 50MW on the average, out of 96 MW from the Karu substation.
“So the complaint they are raising that we don’t have enough capacity to supply them, let them pick the one we have, that is our argument with them.
“It is surprising that you have this capacity and people in Karu, Jikwoyi, Karshi ,Kurudu ,and Orozo, don’t get supply up to two hours a day.
“We have a situation where we can supply them power but they refuse to take the power.
“We have 100 per cent of power to give and they are taking 60 per cent and rejecting 40 per cent.
“In Kubwa substation, AEDC is also taking 60 per cent and rejecting 40 per cent.
“If they say they don’t want to take the power and deny their customers supply, there is nothing we can do.
“Even this issue has been escalated and the management of TCN had raised the issue before the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).’’
He also accused AEDC of its inability to fix its poor distribution network in its franchise areas of Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger and the FCT.