Jennifer Ugwueke
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), at the weekend, stated that power distribution companies (DisCos) will start paying for load rejections, adding that the key players in the industry have associated the recurrent collapse of the national grid to the frequent load rejection by the distribution companies.
NERC in its guidelines for implementation of economic merit order dispatch and other related matters, also said DisCos will be liable for the rejected loads.
The regulator emphasised that the objective of the guideline is to implement a methodology that determines and hold a DisCos financially responsible for failing to distribute its contracted load allocation due to constraints in its network.
It added that the guideline will also implement a methodology to determine and hold the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) accountable for failure to deliver to a DisCo’s contracted load allocation.
“DisCos shall nominate a minimum of their load allocation based on hourly capacity declared by generating plants operating under NBET’s Power Purchase Agreements.
“Where a DisCo’s average energy offtake at the end of a monthly market settlement period is lower than its load allocation based on 6.0(c) above, the DisCo shall be liable to pay capacity charges in line with its load allocation and energy charge based on metered energy intake in the month.