The Federal Government has announced that the country’s power transmission capacity has increased to 8,500 megawatts.

This disclosure was made by the General Manager, Transmission Service Provider, of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, Ajiboye Oluwagbenga.

Oluwagbenga announced on the sidelines of the just concluded Bi-annual Joint Operations, Generation, and Distribution Companies planning meeting in Abuja.

He said the government is not relenting in raising Nigeria’s power transmission capacity.

Reacting to concerns raised by Gencos that TCN did not have adequate capacity to evacuate the quantum of power produced by electricity generation companies, Oluwagbenga debunked the claim.

He said that TCN can conveniently wheel 8,500MW but that the power generation currently coming to the grid always revolving around 4,000MW.

“Let me tell you one funny thing about this sector now, if you people attended the meeting we had with Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission recently, we demonstrated by simulation that TCN can conveniently wheel 8,500MW.

“But up till now, the power generation that is coming to the grid is always revolving around 4,000MW; why? We can blame the Discos (distribution companies) partially because we believe the off-take is not there due to revenue issues.

“But at the same time, I want to ask a germane question, when we were talking about service level agreement, why is the generation arm shying away from signing an agreement of 5,000MW?,” he said.