By: Goodluck E.Adubazi, Abuja.
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has rejected claims that Nigeria’s electricity supply crisis is primarily the result of transmission constraints, insisting that data from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (NERC) First Quarter 2026 Report point overwhelmingly to generation and commercial collection challenges.
TCN, in a statement signed by Management on Thursday, said the reported ₦2.28 trillion loss in GenCo capacity payments was more plausibly linked to poor billing, collection and remittance by electricity distribution companies (DisCos) than to the inability of the transmission network to evacuate available power.
The statement was issued in response to a July 28, 2026, THISDAY report titled “Gencos: Over 2,500MW Generated Power Wasted Due to Grid Unreliability,” in which the Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC) reportedly described Nigeria’s stranded power crisis as a transmission failure rather than a generation failure.
TCN said APGC had also claimed that Nigeria’s installed generation capacity of more than 15,500MW was being throttled by a transmission grid capable of wheeling only about 4,500MW.
But TCN disputed the claim, arguing that the 4,500MW figure was actually close to the average generation capacity that GenCos themselves declared available during the first quarter of 2026.
According to the company, NERC’s report recorded an average available generation capacity of 4,457.96MW from 28 grid-connected power plants during the quarter.
“This is the same order of magnitude as the ‘4,500MW the grid can wheel’ figure attributed to APGC,” TCN said, stressing that the figure originated at the generation end of the electricity value chain and was not a transmission wheeling limit.
The company also noted that NERC’s report put the total installed capacity of the 28 plants covered at 13,625MW, significantly below the more than 15,500MW figure cited in the APGC account.
TCN further disclosed that its verified transmission wheeling capacity currently stands at 8,700MW, almost twice the 4,500MW ceiling attributed to the grid.
It said the network had already demonstrated its ability to transmit substantially more than 4,500MW, pointing to the national grid’s record peak transmission of 5,801.84MW on March 4, 2025, at 49.69Hz.
On that day, the grid reportedly delivered 128,370.75MWh of energy, the highest daily volume recorded in Nigeria.
TCN also cited other peak transmission records of 5,713.60MW on March 2, 2025, and 5,543.20MW on February 14, 2025.
“A grid said to be limited to 4,500MW could not, as a matter of physics, have carried any of these volumes,” the company said.
On the reported ₦2.28 trillion GenCo capacity payment loss, TCN said the structure of the Partial Activation of Contract (PAC) regime placed payment obligations on DisCos for their Partially Contracted Capacity, irrespective of the actual amount of electricity taken.
It therefore argued that capacity payment shortfalls were fundamentally a question of whether DisCos billed consumers, collected revenues and remitted their obligations, rather than whether TCN’s transmission network could evacuate the power.
TCN cited NERC figures showing that DisCos recorded an Aggregate Technical, Commercial and Collection (ATC&C) loss of 37.44 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, compared with a MYTO target of 16.92 per cent.
The regulator valued the resulting variance at ₦140.64 billion in revenue loss during the quarter.
TCN also pointed to a ₦24.95 billion shortfall in DisCo remittances to the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc (NBET) and the Market Operator.
According to the company, these commercial shortfalls provide a more direct explanation for GenCo capacity payment challenges than a transmission evacuation constraint unsupported by NERC’s load factor and plant availability data.
TCN said NERC’s data showed that the average Plant Availability Factor (PAF) across the generation fleet stood at only 32.72 per cent in the first quarter of 2026.
This meant that 67.28 per cent of installed generation capacity was unavailable for dispatch before transmission evacuation became an issue.
The company highlighted several plants with extremely low availability during the quarter.
Alaoji-1, with an installed capacity of 500MW, recorded a PAF of zero per cent, while Rivers-1 recorded 2.05 per cent, Ibom Power-1 and Sapele Steam-1 each recorded 2.67 per cent, Trans Amadi-1 recorded 8.41 per cent and Omotosho-2 recorded 6.15 per cent.
TCN said the figures were consistent with concerns raised by APGC’s leadership over declining gas supplies to thermal power plants.
The company also cited NERC’s report showing that hydropower availability fell by 28.80 per cent, from 2,227.20MW to 1,585.66MW, due to dry-season water levels and maintenance outages at Jebba, Shiroro, Kainji and Dadin-Kowa.
TCN further argued that NERC’s load factor data did not support claims that between 2,500MW and 4,000MW of power was stranded daily because of transmission constraints.
According to the report, the national grid recorded an overall load factor of 92.26 per cent in the first quarter, up from 82.45 per cent in the previous quarter.
TCN said this meant only about 7.74 per cent of the capacity GenCos actually declared available went undispatched on average.
Based on the available capacity of 4,457.96MW, the company estimated that the undispatched capacity was approximately 345MW, far below the 2,500MW to 4,000MW stranded-power figure attributed to APGC.
TCN also noted that five generating plants — Trans Amadi-1, Geregu-1, Ibom Power-1, Dadin-Kowa-1 and Olorunsogo-1 — recorded a 100 per cent load factor during the quarter.
The company also rejected claims that technical transmission losses amounted to between 1,200MW and 1,300MW daily.
It said NERC’s audited Transmission Loss Factor for the first quarter was 7.96 per cent, equivalent to approximately 327MW of average hourly loss against an average hourly generation base of 4,113MWh.
TCN added that NERC’s ₦2.61 billion cost associated with TLF underperformance comprised approximately ₦257.91 million in actual transmission losses and ₦2.35 billion in GenCo capacity penalties.
It therefore cautioned against presenting the entire ₦2.61 billion as the cost of transmission inefficiency.
On the major grid disturbances referenced in the APGC account, TCN said it did not seek to evade responsibility where transmission assets were actually involved.
The company said NERC’s preliminary finding on the January 27, 2026 partial system collapse attributed the event to a lack of reactive power needed to support voltage margins and prevent voltage collapse.
TCN, however, acknowledged that the January 23, 2026 total system collapse involved the separation of a busbar at the Sapele Transmission Station, resulting in the loss of evacuation lines in the Delta corridor.
The company said the incident had been investigated and traced to the operation of a protective device from a GenCo connected to the TCN busbar.
According to TCN, the distinction is important to ensure that responsibility for system failures is assigned according to their actual causes.
TCN said it had continued to invest heavily in strengthening the transmission network.
Between January 2024 and November 2025, the company commissioned 82 new power transformers, adding approximately 8,500MVA of transformation capacity nationwide.
It also carried out reconductoring projects on key transmission corridors, including Delta-Effurun, Sokoto-Birnin Kebbi and the Ikeja West-Alimosho-Ogba-Alausa corridor.
More recently, TCN said the Ihovbor-Benin and Ihovbor-Ajaokuta 330kV Turn-In-Turn-Out lines, commissioned on April 23, 2026, added more than 600MW of wheeling capacity to the Benin corridor.
The projects, it said, would facilitate fuller evacuation of electricity from the Azura Power Plant and the NIPP plant at Ihovbor, with combined evacuation potential of up to 1.5GW when the plants operate at full capacity.
TCN said it recognised the severe challenges confronting Nigeria’s electricity supply industry, including unreliable electricity supply, the economic cost of outages, gas shortages, vandalism and the need for continued investment across the value chain.
The company, however, rejected what it described as the repeated characterisation of Nigeria’s capacity gap as a transmission wheeling or evacuation failure.
TCN said NERC’s first-quarter data, particularly the 32.72 per cent plant availability factor and 92.26 per cent load factor on capacity actually declared available, showed that the major source of the stranded-power problem was at the generation end rather than the transmission end.
It added that its verified wheeling capacity of 8,700MW, alongside the record 5,801.84MW transmitted in March 2025, further demonstrated the network’s capacity.
“TCN continues to invest in network reinforcement, substation upgrades, grid automation and measures to prevent vandalism,” the company said.
It reaffirmed its commitment to working with NERC, the Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO), GenCos, DisCos and other stakeholders to build a more reliable and financially sustainable Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry.
The company also urged industry commentators, including APGC, to base public assessments of the electricity sector on NERC’s published quarterly data so that interventions could be targeted at the points in the value chain where the evidence shows the greatest challenges exist.
