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From Isaac Anumihe, Abuja
Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has faulted a claim by the Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC) to the effect that TCN wasted over 2,500MW due to grid unreliability, arguing that the average available generation capacity across all 28 power plants connected to the grid in 2026/Q1 was 4,457.96MW.
According to TCN, the figure was declared to the system operator, not a transmission wheeling limit set by TCN.
In a statement, TCN said that the 4,500MW ceiling Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC) attributed to the grid is, in Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (NERC’s) records, the average capacity GenCos declared available.
The report recorded that the average available generation capacity across all 28 power plants connected to the grid in 2026/Q1 was 4,457.96MW, a figure GenCos themselves declare to the system operator, not a transmission wheeling limit set by TCN.
In its submission, TCN’s verified wheeling capacity stands at 8,700MW, far bove any volume of power ever actually generated.
“Setting aside the average figures above, TCN’s own verified transmission wheeling capacity now stands at 8,700MW, following sustained investment in transformers, substations and transmission lines. That figure is not a projection; it is a confirmed operational capacity, far above the 4,500MW” ceiling in the report
“The clearest evidence that this capacity is real, rather than theoretical, is what the grid has already carried. On March 4, 2025, the national grid transmitted an all- time peak of 5,801.84MW, delivering a record 128,370.75MWh of energy within a single day, the highest daily volume in Nigeria’s history. That peak, still the highest ever recorded, was wheeled out by the grid without incident and remains comfortably within the network’s 8,700MW capacity.
” Similar peaks were recorded on March 2, 2025 (5,713.60MW) and February 14, 2025 (5,543.20MW). A grid said to be limited to 4,500MW could not, as a matter of physics, have carried any of these volumes, let alone all three” the company, stated.
Furthermore, between January 2024 and November 2025, a period of just 23 months, the company commissioned 82 new power transformers nationwide, adding approximately 8,500MVA of transformation capacity, one of the most concentrated periods of grid strengthening in TCN’s history.
” This has been accompanied by active reconductoring of ageing transmission lines, including the Delta to Effurun 132kV line, the Sokoto to Birnin Kebbi line (raised from 70MW to 150MW) and the Ikeja West to Alimosho to Ogba to Alausa corridor (raised from 120MW to 240MW), among others.
“Most recently, the Ihovbor to Benin and Ihovbor to Ajaokuta 330kV turn-in turn-out lines, commissioned on April 23, 2026, added over 600MW of wheeling capacity to the Benin corridor and now enable fuller evacuation of power from the Azura Power Plant and the Nigerian Independent Power Plant (NIPP) at Ihovbor, both within the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) portfolio, with a combined evacuation potential of up to 1.5GW once both plants run at full output” TCN, explained.
The transmission company also noted that the investments sustained over successive quarters, are difficult to reconcile with an account of the network as a static 4,500MW bottleneck.
Earlier, GenCos under the auspices of Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC) had argued in a report published by a national newspaper that over 15,500MW is being throttled by a grid that can only wheel around 4,500MW.
APGC is quoted as stating that Nigeria’s stranded power crisis is a transmission failure and not a generation failure,.
ENDS
