The Federal Government has approved the issuance of two power generation licences with a combined capacity of 723 megawatts.
It said this would raise the country’s electricity output by over 700MW when the power projects were completed.
Power sector operators, in conjunction with the Federal Government, had been making efforts to increase Nigeria’s power generation and its supply, after the successor electricity generation and distribution arms of the sector were unbundled and privatised in November 2013.
Since then, Nigeria’s power generation had been hovering between 3,500MW and 5,000MW, a figure which operators and experts described as too low for a population of over 200 million people.
Figures obtained from Federal Ministry of Power, on Friday, for instance, showed that power generation on the national grid as of 6.00 am was 3,992.4MW, which was lower than the peak of 4,017.6MW recorded on Thursday.
To boost power supply in Nigeria, the government and investors had been constructing power plants, while the NERC has been issuing licences to investors to generate electricity.
Recall that President Bola Tinubu, on Friday, carried out the Presidential groundbreaking for the construction of a 350MW power plant in Abuja, being the first phase of the Gwagwalada Integrated Power Project.
Also, as part of measures to boost power generation, the NERC in its latest first quarter report for 2023, obtained in Abuja on Friday, stated it had approved the issuance of two power generation licences with a combined capacity of 723MW.
Under the licensing and permits section in the report, the NERC said, “The commission approved the issuance of two new generation licences with a combined capacity of 723MW in 2023/Q1.
“It also authorised the issuance of two new Independent Electricity Distribution Network licences and amendment of an existing Independent electricity distribution licence.
“Five captive power generation permits were issued alongside five permits and four registrations for mini-grid. The commission also certified six Meter Service Providers within the quarter under review.”
Last month, Sunday PUNCH reported that the commission issued power generation licences to 21 investors in 2022, while114 registration/permits were issued for the development of mini-grids to boost power supply across the country.
“In 2022/Q4, the commission approved the issuance of two new generation licences with a combined capacity of 56.50MW and authorised the amendment of two on-grid embedded generation licences.
