Power
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Shut down of a power plant in Delta State for repair of transmission lines will worsen power supply in Nigeria for two weeks that the exercise will last
| By Anayo Ezugwu | Jun 27, 2016 @ 01:00 GMT |
NIGERIANS are to witness more power outages due to the planned shutdown of the 300 megawatts, MW, Agip Okpai Power Plant in Delta State for repairs of power transmission lines. This will affect the country’s power generation and supply capacity in the next couple of weeks. According to a communiqué issued at the monthly meeting held in Kano between Babatunde Fashola, minister of power, works and housing, and operators in the country, the closure was necessary to allow the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, undertake repair works on its vandalised 55 kilometre transmission line within the region.
“TCN also stated its intention to make public announcements of upcoming maintenance projects which may negatively impact power supply. TCN informed the meeting of the need to shut down the 300MW Okpai power plant so that a tower which was earlier vandalised can be repaired to restore a 55km transmission line. The hydroelectric power stations (Kainji, Jebba and Shiroro) agreed to work with TCN to boost output during the two-week outage period to minimise the effect of the outage,” the communiqué said.
It also explained that the TCN had recently completed 20 transmission projects in Gwagwalada, Kaduna, Afam, Apo, Lekki and Omotosho, adding that this would improve power distribution in Abuja and Lagos. TCN also announced that it was working hard to restore power to Maiduguri in Borno State by next month after a long period of outage.
The communiqué said an estimated 2,000MW of electricity would be added to the country’s generation capacity by mid-2017 following plans by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, to complete and commission four infrastructure projects to improve gas supply to power plants over the next few months through September 30.
“A total of 855 million standard cubic feet per day (mmsfc/d) of gas is expected to be added to the domestic gas supply in the short term of which about 70 per cent is sent to power plants for use in generation. It is estimated that the increase in gas supply to power plants will increase generation capacity by approximately 2000MW by the middle of 2017.”
Besides, Fashola, has equally expressed the resolve of the federal government to establish new power stations in areas close to the energy sources all over the country. He told journalists shortly after the conclusion of the sixth power sector meeting in Kano, that creating more power plants would enable the federal government to use coal, hydro-power plants and solar energy to complement what was lost to the activities of pipelines vandals.
According to him, the federal government was not confined to one section of the country to source power, adding that with the effective introduction of a three phase roadmap Nigerians would be at an ample liberty to enjoy uninterrupted power supply.
He, however, stated that the activities of pipeline vandals had taken an abysmal toll on the nation to the extent that the major gas plants supplying the service were shut, stressing that with the current development, the federal government had been compelled to creating plants close to energy sources.
He pointed out that his ministry was not saddled with the task of providing or distributing power rather it was saddled with the business of regulating how the service providers were operating to serve people affirming that with active collaboration with the National Electricity Regulatory Council the objective could be achieved.
He said it would take the federal government 18 months to complete the project as it’s involved some concrete strategic plan, stressing, however, that the quest for speedy economic development could only be achieved with the power sector in good shape.
He further revealed that the federal government was putting too much pressure on DISCOS all over the country to live up to expectation, warning that nothing would be left to chance in taking punitive steps against erring ones.
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