A review of some of the operations of power holding company of Nigeria

Abstract

Electric power supply is the most important commodity for national development in any nation. The Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) is responsible for generating, transmitting, distributing and selling electric power to the various consumers throughout the country. Although regular power supply is essential to the rapid development of any society, power supply in Nigeria is erratic and unreliable. The paper presents the results of an investigation conducted on some of the operations of the generating department, transmitting department and distributing department of PHCN. The paper also examines the various stages of power generation and some of the factors responsible for power outages. These factors include: overcurrent fault, earth fault, planned outages and load shedding. These problems were found to span the various stages of power generation and they also included generation capacity; insufficient and old equipment, unsuitable transmission structure, long, fragile network with lack of loops as well as high transmission and distribution losses.