Electricity tariff increases in Nigeria: what they mean for your energy exposure
Band A tariffs, VAT and supply hours have changed the grid's role for many Nigerian businesses. How to think about tariff exposure alongside generator cost.
MGM Energy technical team · Commercial · 2026-09-21
For many Nigerian businesses the grid is no longer the cheap baseline with the generator as the expensive backup. Band A tariffs tie price to promised supply hours, and when the promised hours do not arrive the generator still runs. The result is two energy bills rising at once.
Read your tariff correctly
Published DisCo tariffs are ex-VAT; your delivered cost is the tariff plus 7.5% VAT. Check your band, your actual supply hours against the band's commitment, and whether you are on a prepaid or post-paid meter. A comparison that uses the headline tariff without VAT understates what the grid costs you.
Tariff exposure is only part of the picture
A tariff increase is visible because it arrives on a bill. The larger exposure is often in the hours the grid does not deliver — generator fuel, servicing and the operations that stop during changeover. Looking at the tariff alone leads to the wrong fix.
What an engineered plan changes
Solar and storage let a site decide how much of its energy it buys from the grid, how much it generates, and which loads are protected when supply fails. The right balance depends on measured load and grid hours. We do not publish a savings figure for a site we have not measured — the Energy Exposure Assessment is how you get one that means something.