Energy Briefs
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THE Egbin Power station, largest electricity generation plant in Nigeria has soared above 1,000 megawatts in the last couple of weeks. Kola Adesina, chairman, Egbin Power Plc, who disclosed this in a statement on Wednesday, July 1, said the achievement is sequel to continuous investment and upgrade activities on the plant by the owners, Sahara Power Group and Korea Electric Power Corporation, KEPCO.
It is the second time the plant is hitting and maintaining the 1,000MW mark, the first being in eight years ago. Adesina said the feat signposts the unfolding success of the privatisation process and power sector reform in Nigeria. He attributed the achievement partly to the direct intervention of the federal government in its determination to resolve the power crisis and the recent improvement in gas supply.
“This is driving the increase in power supply in the nation, boosting socio-economic development. Prior to this, we had invested heavily and had the plant ready to generate power at full capacity but there was no gas to do so. This is indeed a good development for the power sector in Nigeria,” he said.
According to Dallas Peavey, the company’s chief executive officer, the transformation in Egbin commenced following its acquisition by Kepco Energy Resource Limited, KERL, in collaboration with its technical partners, Korea Electric Power Corporation, KEPCO. “Through the injection of close to N50 billion in new capital into Egbin post privatisation, the Sahara Power/KEPCO partnership has brought to the power plant, an unprecedented level of innovativeness, professionalism, human capital development and continuing investment in new technology.
“The control room panels, installed at the plant’s inception have been removed and upgraded to state of the art digital panels. The highlight of the main plant rehabilitation occurred in the first quarter of 2015, when the company successfully rehabilitated ST Unit 6 bringing an additional 220mw to the national grid and restoring the power plant to its installed capacity of 1320mw.”
Commending the federal government for recent interventions in the gas situation that has impacted power generation positively, Peavey called for more dynamic policies and incentives for sustainable gas supply across the nation.
— Jul 13, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT
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Tags: 000MW 1 1000 Megawatts Dallas Peavey Egbin Power Plc Egbin Power Station KEPCO Kepco Energy Resource Limited KERL Kola Adesina Korea Electric Power Corporation privatisation Sahara Power Group technical partners
