National blackout imminent, GENCos threaten power plants shut down

The electricity generating companies (GENCOs) yesterday issued a notice of an impending shutdown of their power plants nationwide.
With the warning, nationwide blackout is imminent in Nigeria.
The Executive Secretary, Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC), Joy Ogaji, who issued the notice in a statement, blamed the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) for their action.
Ogaji, who did not disclose when the shutdown of the power plants would start, also accused the TCN for its failure to fully take up and transmit available volume of electricity generated into the national grid.
The statement read: “The shutdown will happen automatically, because the machines are already giving us the signal that they are about to shut down.
It could happen this month.
It could happen next month or even tomorrow.
Nobody knows exactly when.
“The machines have given us (GENCOs) notice.
That is why we are giving the market that notice, so that when it happens, Nigerians will not say GENCOs are sabotaging the market.” She continued: “For instance, out of an average available electricity capacity of 7,485 megawatts (MW) generated on a daily basis by the GENCOs last April, data published by the System Operator/ National Control Centre showed the TCN could only transmit an average of 3985MW (about 46.8 per cent) of the available capacity