Generator vs Band A Electricity: What a kWh Actually Costs in Nigeria (2026)

Almost every Nigerian household and small business runs two power systems in parallel: the grid, and a generator for when the grid isn't there. Most people have a rough sense that the generator is "expensive," but very few have ever put the two on the same scale — naira per kilowatt-hour — and compared them directly.

We did. The gap is much wider than most people assume, and diesel's recent run has widened it further.

The short answer

Band A grid electricity costs ₦209.50/kWh — the same rate across all 11 NERC-regulated DisCos, frozen since July 2024.
A generator costs roughly ₦900–₦1,400 per kWh, depending on the machine and the fuel. That's 4 to 7 times the most expensive grid tariff in the country.
Against the cheapest grid band, the gap is absurd: a small petrol generator costs around 45 times what Ikeja Electric's Band E customers pay per unit.
And that's fuel only. Purchase price, servicing, oil changes and the eventual replacement all sit on top.
The formula is simple: cost per kWh = (litres per hour × price per litre) ÷ kW output. Your machine's numbers will differ from ours — the formula is the part worth keeping.

The fuel prices we're working from

Nigeria's National Bureau of Statistics runs a monthly price survey across all 774 local government areas, sampling over 10,000 outlets — it's the only national fuel price series with that kind of coverage, and it's the primary source here rather than pump anecdotes.

| Fuel | National average retail price | |---|---| | Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) | ₦1,596.25/litre | | Automotive Gas Oil (diesel) | ₦3,277.47/litre |

Both figures are the latest published on the NBS headline dashboard, drawn from its Premium Motor Spirit and Automotive Gas Oil Price Watch series. Diesel is the number to watch: it has roughly doubled over the past year in the NBS series, which is why generator-heavy businesses have felt this year far more sharply than households running small petrol sets.

State-level prices vary a lot around these national averages — in recent NBS reports the spread between the cheapest and most expensive states has run to several hundred naira per litre — so treat these as a national midpoint, not your local pump price.

The formula

Generators are rated in kVA, but they deliver kW, and the two aren't the same. Most small generators assume a power factor of about 0.8, so a 1 kVA machine delivers roughly 0.8 kW at full load. Then:

Cost per kWh = (litres burned per hour × price per litre) ÷ kW actually delivered

Two things make real-world numbers worse than the spec sheet. First, fuel consumption doesn't fall proportionally with load — a generator running at 25% load burns far more than 25% of its full-load fuel. Second, almost nobody runs a generator at full load. So if you're estimating, estimate pessimistically.

What that works out to

Using the NBS prices above and consumption figures typical of each class of machine:

| Machine | Fuel | Litres/hr | kW delivered | Cost per kWh | |---|---|---|---|---| | Small petrol set (~1 kVA) | Petrol | 0.7 | 0.8 | ₦1,396.72 | | Mid-size petrol (~3 kVA) | Petrol | 1.5 | 2.5 | ₦957.75 | | Small diesel (~12.5 kVA) | Diesel | 3.0 | 10 | ₦983.24 | | Larger diesel (~25 kVA) | Diesel | 5.5 | 20 | ₦901.30 |

Working through the first row: 0.7 litres × ₦1,596.25 = ₦1,117.38 of petrol per hour, delivering 0.8 kWh of electricity, so ₦1,117.38 ÷ 0.8 = ₦1,396.72 per kWh.

Note the shape of this: bigger machines are more efficient per unit, not less. The small petrol generator — the one most households own precisely because it's the cheapest to buy — is the most expensive way to make electricity in the table. That's the trap. The cheap machine has the expensive electricity.

The consumption figures above are representative of each class rather than measured from a specific model, so treat the naira figures as illustrative and the formula as the reliable part. If you know your own generator's real consumption — time how long a full tank lasts under your normal load — you'll get a number you can trust.

Against the grid

| Source | Cost per kWh | vs Band A | |---|---|---| | Ikeja Electric Band E | ₦31.24 | 0.15× | | Band A (all NERC DisCos) | ₦209.50 | 1× | | Larger diesel generator | ₦901.30 | 4.3× | | Mid-size petrol generator | ₦957.75 | 4.6× | | Small diesel generator | ₦983.24 | 4.7× | | Small petrol generator | ₦1,396.72 | 6.7× |

Band A customers pay the highest tariff in Nigeria and are often the loudest complainers about it — understandably, since ₦209.50/kWh is roughly seven times what Band E customers on the same DisCo pay. But even Band A is between four and seven times cheaper than self-generation. If you are on Band A and actually receiving your 20+ hours, you are getting the cheapest electricity available to you by a wide margin.

The uncomfortable corollary: the customers on Bands D and E, paying ₦31–₦40/kWh, are the ones getting only 4–12 hours of supply a day. They pay the least per grid unit and are forced onto the most expensive alternative for the rest of the day. The effective cost per kWh of their total electricity consumption — grid plus generator — is far higher than the tariff table suggests.

A practical way to use this

Two numbers worth working out for your own situation.

What your generator hours actually cost. If you run a 3 kVA petrol generator for 5 hours a night, that's roughly 1.5 × 5 = 7.5 litres, or about ₦11,972 a night at ₦1,596.25/litre — call it ₦359,000 a month if you do it every night. The same 12.5 kWh from Band A grid power would cost about ₦2,619.

What a solar or inverter system is competing against. Any alternative only has to beat your generator's cost per kWh, not the grid's. When self-generation sits near ₦1,000/kWh, the payback maths on an inverter-plus-battery setup looks very different than it does against a ₦209.50 tariff — which is exactly why inverter adoption has moved fastest among people with the worst grid supply and the biggest diesel bills.

Update, September 2026: we have since built the other half of this comparison. Solar vs Generator in Nigeria: What Each Kilowatt-Hour Really Costs puts a third number next to the two above — solar levelises to roughly ₦200/kWh over ten years — and works through the condition attached to it, which is that cheaper per unit only pays back if your generator runs enough hours to be worth displacing. You can run your own figures in the solar payback calculator.

Work out your actual electricity bill and what a recharge buys →

Fuel prices are the latest national averages published by the National Bureau of Statistics from its monthly Premium Motor Spirit and Automotive Gas Oil Price Watch surveys, checked as of August 2026. Electricity tariffs are from NERC's published Multi-Year Tariff Orders — Band A has been ₦209.50/kWh across all 11 NERC-regulated DisCos since July 2024, and Ikeja Electric's Band E has been ₦31.24/kWh since December 2022. Generator fuel-consumption figures are representative of each machine class, not measurements of a specific model; use the formula with your own generator's consumption for an accurate figure. Enugu State is regulated separately by EERC and its Band A rate differs. This article is general information, not financial advice.