From David Onuoja, Abuja
The Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO), has called for tighter coordination across the power sector and stricter enforcement of technical obligations, as it opened the 2026 Hydro Generation Planning Meeting held at historic Jebba Hydro Power Station in Niger State recently.
The five-day meeting, which runs from 17th to 21st August 2026, brought together representatives of the Federal Ministry of Power, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, the Transmission Company of Nigeria, Distribution companies, Hydropower generating companies, water resources authorities and development partners.
Addressing the gathering, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of NISO, Engr. Abdu Mohammed, said, the Forum provided a critical platform to translate hydrological realities and plant availability into an integrated generation plan for the national grid.
He said, governor response is no longer treated as a theoretical planning attribute but as a measured and enforced obligation.
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“Over the past year, NISO intensified compliance checks on Free Governor Control across the generation fleet, including field inspections, time-bound conditional derogation and a penalty framework tied to Monthly Penalized Capacity, all applied under NERC directives. Every hydro unit in your various plants has a governor-response profile that NISO can see. That visibility should inform how we plan together, not just how we enforce afterward”, he explained to the delegates.
Beyond megawatts, the CEO stressed that hydropower remains strategically important because of the flexibility it offers a grid facing variability, changing demand and transmission constraints. He listed reserve provision, voltage support and system restoration as additional services hydro stations provide, arguing that planning must therefore go beyond counting available capacity to ensuring the system remains secure and economic.
The complexity of hydro planning was also highlighted. Generation capability, he explained, depends on reservoir levels and inflows, upstream and downstream releases, seasonal hydrology, dam management requirements, unit availability, planned and forced outages, turbine constraints, transmission capability and system demand. For this reason, he said, planning must be coordinated, transparent and technically realistic, involving all stakeholders rather than done in isolation.
On NISO’s mandate under the Electricity Act 2023, the MD said the organization is responsible for generation scheduling, dispatch, outage coordination, congestion management, ancillary services and long-term system planning. However, he added that effective operation cannot be achieved by NISO alone and requires close collaboration with GenCos, TCN, DisCos, regulators and water authorities to align technical capability with grid requirements.
A major concern raised also, was the gap between planning and implementation. On this, NISO Chief urged participants to improve the quality and timeliness of eight key inputs: hydrological forecasts, generation availability declarations, maintenance and outage schedules, unit capability data, reservoir information, transmission outage plans, generation forecasts and real-time communication with the System Operator. He warned that the quality of these inputs directly affects grid security.
Looking at the evolving energy mix, he noted that the Electricity Act 2023 recognizes renewables including hydropower, while embedded generation and distributed resources are also growing. With more variable renewable energy expected, he said hydro stations with demonstrably compliant governor performance will become even more valuable for rapid response.
Mohammed called for the preservation, rehabilitation and modernization of existing hydro assets alongside development of new viable resources, and for maintenance to be coordinated with system needs to minimize forced outages.
The future of planning, he added, must be data-driven. NISO’s ongoing modern control centre and operational intelligence program is already deploying Energy Management Systems, SCADA, IoT, state estimation and contingency analysis.
For hydropower, this should mean better integration of hydrological data, reservoir levels, inflow forecasts, unit availability and real-time system conditions to move from historical-pattern planning to predictive, risk-informed scheduling.
The Managing Director in his conclusion urged participants to approach the meeting with openness and to leave with clear, tracked responsibilities; saying, expected outcomes include a projected hydro generation profile, water availability outlook, coordinated maintenance schedules, governor-compliance status, and specific actions with owners and timelines.
His words: “I do not want this to be another meeting whose outcomes quietly lapse. The success of this meeting should be measured not by the quality of the presentations delivered here, but by the quality of the decisions taken and the extent to which those decisions translate into improved generation availability, enhanced grid security and greater electricity supply to Nigerians,” he said.
