By Onu Okorie

Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Independent System Operator NISO has called for stronger coordination, improved data sharing and stricter operational discipline among electricity sector stakeholders to maximise hydropower generation and strengthen the reliability of Nigeria’s national grid.
The NISO chief made the call while speaking at the opening of the 2026 Hydro Generation Planning Meeting at the Jebba Hydro Power Station, stressing that hydropower remains a strategic component of Nigeria’s electricity supply industry.
According to the chief executive, the importance of hydropower goes beyond electricity generation, as hydro facilities provide critical grid-support services, including frequency regulation, reserve provision, voltage support and system restoration.
The meeting, the NISO boss said, was convened to enable stakeholders to review hydropower performance, operational constraints, maintenance requirements, water-resource outlook and generation projections, with a view to developing an integrated plan for the secure and reliable operation of the national grid.
A key issue highlighted during the address was compliance with Free Governor Control requirements across generating stations. The NISO chief disclosed that the system operator had intensified enforcement over the past year through field inspections, conditional derogations with fixed expiry dates and a penalty framework linked to Monthly Penalizable Capacity, in line with regulatory directives.
The NISO boss noted that hydro generation planning is particularly important because available generation is influenced by several factors, including reservoir levels, water inflows, seasonal hydrological conditions, generating-unit availability, maintenance schedules, transmission network capability and electricity demand patterns.
The chief executive emphasised that effective planning must be transparent, technically realistic and developed collaboratively by generating companies, transmission operators, distribution companies, water-resource authorities, regulators and other stakeholders.
Highlighting NISO’s mandate under the Electricity Act 2023, the MD/CEO said the organisation is responsible for coordinating key aspects of system operations, including generation scheduling, dispatch, outage coordination, congestion management, ancillary services and long-term system planning.
These responsibilities, the chief executive said, are aimed at promoting security, reliability and efficiency across Nigeria’s electricity sector.
The address also underscored the need to close the gap between planning and implementation through improved hydrological forecasting, timely declarations of generation availability, coordinated maintenance schedules and stronger real-time communication between power stations and the system operator.
On Nigeria’s evolving energy mix, the NISO chief said hydropower would assume an increasingly important role as the country expands renewable energy deployment and distributed generation.
The chief executive explained that hydro resources offer operational flexibility and the ability to respond rapidly to changes in electricity supply and demand, making them particularly valuable in an increasingly diversified power system.
Stakeholders were also urged to prioritise the rehabilitation, modernisation and optimisation of existing hydro assets while strengthening maintenance practices to reduce forced outages and improve generating-unit availability.
The NISO chief further highlighted the organisation’s ongoing modernisation efforts, including investments in advanced control-centre and operational-intelligence systems designed to improve visibility across the power network.
The systems include Energy Management Systems (EMS), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, state estimation and contingency analysis.