Osamagbe Imadiyi
Around 250 businesses and educational institutions have left their respective power distribution companies to produce their own electricity as the nation struggles with frequent blackouts.
Due to the high cost of electricity, rising fuel prices, frequent grid failures, and line tripping, the organizations—many of which use large amounts of electricity—shuffled the national grid in order to produce dependable electricity for themselves.
The companies have produced up to 6,500 megawatts of electricity overall, according to findings from various data sources, especially the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission. This is more than the nation’s current power generation, which is between 4,500 and 5,000 megawatts.
Permits to generate captive power are granted to organizations that plan to own and operate power plants solely for their own use. This implies that the entities are prohibited from selling any electricity produced by the plant to outside parties.
Permits to generate captive power were issued to 249 companies and institutions, according to data obtained from NERC. Approximately 5,180MW of power is produced by these organizations.
This would bring the total amount of energy produced by businesses and educational institutions to over 6,500MW, when combined with the 1,500MW produced by the Dangote Group. Nigeria LNG produces 360MW of electricity, while Rivers State’s Pure Flour Mills Limited was granted permission to produce 546MW, according to NERC.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Shell, Nigerian Breweries Plc, Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc, Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, Warri refinery, Kaduna refinery, Lafarge Cement Wapco Nigeria Plc, Procter and Gamble Nigeria Limited, Bank of Industry Ltd., and MTN Nigeria are a few of the companies.
Other companies include: Guinness Nigeria Plc, Total Upstream Nigeria Limited, Aluminum Smelter Company of Nigeria, De-United Foods Industries Limited, Sagamu Steel Nigeria Limited, British American Tobacco Nigeria Limited, Unilever Nigeria Plc, Total E & P Nigeria Limited, Guinness Nigeria Plc, Guinness Nigeria Plc, First Bank of Nigeria Plc, Dangote Cement Plc, Lekki Port LFTZ Enterprise Limited, Guinness Nigeria Plc, and Mikano International Limited.