Politically speaking, third world countries suffer from the phenomenon of regulatory capture whereby those to be regulated end up corrupting the regulator and render it ineffective in the discharge of its functions thus defeating the aim of setting up such a regulatory outfit. However, in implementing the policy of load allocation monitoring on an hourly basis since around May, 2022, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has done quite well, which has impacted positively in the power sector in Nigeria.
Prior to the enforcement of this policy, the grid system was like “Jankara market” where trading activities are informal and unorganized. DISCOs’ operated a model based on sending electricity to high income-yielding areas where revenue realized is equal to energy consumed while asphyxiating areas with low expected income that is unaccounted for. This liability was hanging over the DISCOs’ like a sword of Damocles  
This template gave room to the phenomenon of “load rejection” as healthy feeders are switched off due to low revenue collection and this practice leads to high system frequency with adverse effect on the whole grid system, giving rise to the ramping up and down or the outright shutting down of generators to control the high system frequency in order to prevent system collapse as the frequency operating range is always exceeded and machine relay settings violated.
Below is a random template of the difference between peak and lowest generation before and after NERC commenced implementation of this lofty policy of a 24 hour load monitoring of DISCOs’ feeders to ensure that they carry their allocated load that is computed based on their submitted daily nominations and available generation. In case of infractions, the affected DISCO is expected to submit a valid reason (faults, emergency outages etc) for their inability to maintain their load allocation.

Random Sampling of Peak and Lowest Generation Before and After the Commencement of the Policy

  

S/N

Date

Peak Gen. (MW)

Time (HRS)

Lowest Gen. (MW)

Time (HRS)

Diff. between Peak and Lowest Gen. (MW)

1

05/01/22

4,779.7

2115

3,839.4

0400

940.3

2

25/01/22

5,030.4

2145

3,877.0

0800

1,153.4

3

31/01/22

4,778.4

2115

3,677.6

1400

1,100.8

4

01/02/22

5,183.7

2115

3,825.0

0400

1,358.7

5

05/02/22

4,862.9

2115

3,707.3

0400

1,155.6

6

27/02/22

4,550.1

0600

3,595.4

1700

954.7

7

05/03/22

4,402.9

1100

3,781.8

1600

621.1

8

25/03/22

4,124.2

0600

3,614.8

1400

509.4

9

25/04/22

4,193.8

2200

3,456.4

2400

737.4

10

30/04/22

4,516.2

2200

4,007.2

0300

509.0

11

22/05/22

3,751.1

2145

3,359.9

1400

391.2

12

20/06/22

3,540.6

0500

3,176.6

2300

364.0

13

29/06/22

3,137.2

1500

2,869.3

1900

267.9

14

22/07/22

3,945.8

0600

3,595.3

0400

350.5

15

05/08/22

4,193.3

0600

3,780.0

0400

413.3

16

17/09/22

4,362.4

0600

3,817.4

0400

545.0

17

19/11/22

4,218.9

2400

3,742.4

1100

476.5

18

20/01/23

3,948.0

2130

3,458.8

1700

489.2

19

05/02/23

4,674.4

0600

4,233.3

1100

441.1

20

09/02/23

4,481.6

1930

4,185.2

1400

296.4

 Source: Daily Broadcast, NCC

From the above table, the difference between peak and lowest generation before the commencement of the policy was as high as 1,000MW but reduced to below 500MW since the policy started around May, 2022 except during periods of stress and crisis.
The implementation of this load monitoring policy by NERC has restored sanity and stability to the grid and improve power supply to customers.
NERC should give impetus to the implementation of other extant policies such as compelling DISCOs’ to provide meters to new customers, elimination of the exploitative estimated billing system, reducing outage downtime of faulty feeders, especially in unmetered parts of their franchise and the restoration of the pre-privatization 24-hour shift duty for technical staff etc.