Nigeria’s power generation hits 3,801.19MW

THE country has increased power generation from the 3,657.02MW it recorded two weeks ago to 3,801.19MW, while energy sent out has reached 3,708MW from the 3,584MW.

Nigeria has continued to enjoy significant increase in power generation and supply in the last few weeks achieved, during the review period.

For instance, the country’s power generation, which was below 2,000MW between January and May this year, is already recording peak generation of about 4,057.20MW, according to the latest power generation report by the Presidential Taskforce on Power.

This is still below the peak demand forecast of 12,800MW. The highest peak energy generated was 4,517.6MW recorded in 2012.

Chairman of Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Dr. Sam Amadi said that power generation might peak above 5,500MW in July if on-going repairs on gas supply pipelines are completed.

He said the commission has received assurances from the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) that improvements on gas supply are coming up.

Amadi, said a lot work has been done to contain the frequent vandalism of gas pipelines.

He added: “much of the vandalisms are in the gas side. The gas problem is getting better. We had meeting with the Group Executive Director of gas at NNPC and he told us of improvements coming up. We hope that by the end of July, with the repair work going on, we might be able to do maybe above 5,500mw.

“The assurance we have is the East-West Gas Pipeline is projected for completion sometime towards the end of 2016. The idea is that we should be able to do slightly above 6000mw. The problem is that it depends also on increase in capacity. If we get the NIPP plants in, we are looking that 4,700mw. If we add this to the distribution companies, we can go above 9,000mw. Right now, we don’t have enough gas to do above that.

“They are looking at 2016-2017. With the gas that will come from the new and existing pipelines, the operators think that we can get enough to get us the available capacity that we have, and the recoverable capacity that the generators would have”.
He expressed the hope that the new government would do more to curb vandalism, adding that the “reports we have from them is that there is containment and vandalism has dropped as well”.

Meanwhile, the core investor of Ughelli Power Plc, Transcorp Ughelli Power Limited, has unfolded plans to ramp up the generation capacity of the plant from the current installed capacity of 972megawatt (mw) to 2200mw in the next three years.

Briefing the post privatisation monitoring team from the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), last week, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Transcorp Ughelli Power Limited, Adeoye Fadeyibi said that on takeover of the plant on November 1, 2013, the core investor inherited only four operational turbines generating only 160mw of power.

Fadeyibi, who was represented by the Chief Finance Officer (CFO), Olukunle Fagbayi, noted that by June 2015, the core investor had rehabilitated and made 13 out of the 18 units fully operational and generating about 635mw of available capacity.

He further pointed out that in the company’s generation forecast, by December 2015, the generation capacity would be raised to about 850mw and in December 2017 to about 1650mw and 2200mw in 2018.

He however lamented that due to the quality and quantity of gas available to the plant, only about 350mw could be made available to the grid.

He pointed out that another major challenge facing the company was the wheeling capacity of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) and tasked the Federal Government on investment in the transmission segment of the value chain of the power infrastructure to strengthen the wheeling capacity of TCN.

He revealed that since the takeover of the plant in November 2013, the company had engaged an additional 45 staff in its payroll, assuring that Transcorp was going to surpass all the key performance indicators (KPIs) covenanted in its Post Acquisition Plan (PAP).

The CEO also revealed that as part of its corporate social responsibility, the company runs a model school with about 1,000 student enrollment as well as skills acquisition schemes for the host communities.

The BPE Post Privatization Monitoring team to Ughelli Power Plc was led by the Director, Post Privatization Monitoring Department,