Statistical Modelling of Outage Events, Available Capacity, and Foreign Exchange Rate with Grid-Connected Power Generation in Nigeria.

Abstract

Electricity is one of the major factors that influence the level of growth of an economy, as well as human development. With applications in diverse spheres of life, it is at the core of human productivity and economic growth. Nations therefore, continually strive to ensure adequate and secured supply. Nigeria’s electric power sector experienced a major event in 2013 with the privatization of successor entities, pursuant to the enactment of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSRA) 2005. With about ten years of the electricity market in Transitional phase, this research sought to assess the impact of key operational and economic factors on the level of her on-grid electricity supply. Multivariate linear regression, a least squares approximation method was adopted considering four independent variables – Available Capacity (MW), Grid Outage Events (Total and partial), and Foreign Exchange Rate (₦/$). The Statsmodel package of python programming language was used for the 45 months’ data points for each variable. A weak relationship was found with the combined variables explaining 8.1% of the dataset for power generation from the developed model. However, Available Capacity, Grid Outage Events, and Foreign Exchange Rate are not sufficient to determine the growth of grid connected power generation.