POWER GRID COLLAPSE IMPACTS ON CONSUMERS AND UTILITY COMPANIES IN NIGERIA
Electricity is germane to socio-economic development of any country in the world. Nigeria requires rigorous grid assessment because of incessant collapse caused by increased energy demand, over blotted population, obsolete lines, obsolete transformers, inadequate gas supply to certain generating stations and huge power demand-generation gap. The paper reviews the causes of grid collapse and its impacts on both consumers and utility companies. The method used in this paper was collection of secondary data on grid collapse from previous literatures, the use of simple mathematical percentage and bar charts to carry out analysis of partial and total grid collapse. Mathematical estimate of economic losses in one hour for domestic consumers was carried out in to estimate the capital cost being wasted at any point that grid collapse occurred which ought to be re-invested into the power sector. The amount estimated was #1,125,000,000($2,450, 000).This paper recommends that there should be power demand and generation gap through vigorous injection of renewable energy into the grid network, adequate power planning with respect to population increase, replacement of obsolete power components and adequate injection of gas into the gas power stations. Both total and partial grid collapse should be reduce in order to make electricity available to citizens and this will make payments of electricity bills regular for consumers while the utility companies will have access to funds in order to carry out maintenance activities on the networks.
KEYWORDS: collapse, consumers, generation, grid, impacts, utilities
