Sopuruchi Onwuka
Federal government is working to recover the nation’s electric power infrastructure from prevailing obsolescence, sinking trillions of Naira in revamping and expanding transmission and distribution network in delivering improved electricity supply to homes and businesses in the country.
Chairman of Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Mr Sanusi Garba, stated in a briefing with journalists in Lagos that the ongoing efforts would result in stronger, more reliable and resilient grid network that would provide connectivity between the robust generation capacity and actual electricity supply in the market.
The Oracle Today reports that power generation companies in the country boast of over 12, 000 megawatts, lamenting that the upstream sector of the industry is suffering high level of redundancy which, according to them, has limited the capacity of producers to remediate the acute electricity supply shortfall in the country.
The Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC) had officially declared that its members were suffering collective redundancy of about 8000 megawatts, pointing at maximum distribution capacity of about 3,700 megawatts in the distribution segment of the industry.
Executive Secretary of APGC, Dr Joy Ogaji, had stated that plant sub-optimization in the upstream power sector came with huge adverse financial and revenue implications which, she said, led to very poor returns on investments. The investment and operational losses, according to her, are worsened by the prevailing liquidity and debt crises in the system.
NERC declared that trillions of Naira have been invested to improve the capacity of the power transmission grid to about 8,100 megawatts at the beginning of the month. The agency stated that fresh investments are being deployed to fix and consolidate all infrastructure for gas supply to generation companies, transmission towers that wheel electricity from production plants to distribution zones, and power distribution lines within the networks of marketing companies that dominate the retail end of the sector.
According to Mr Garba, strong transmission and distribution grid networks would lay the grounds for optimization of full plant capacity of the generation companies, including the government owned Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) Plc which currently holds the highest generation plant capacity in the industry.
He said power transmission capacity has improved across one year period from about 5000 megawatts in March 2021 to about 8,100 megawatts in March 2022. He recounted that the national transmission grid has recorded significant 29 outages in the past five years since 2018.
The Oracle Today reports that the system collapsed 12 times in 2018; nine times in 20219; four times in 2020, two times in 2021 and two times in the first quarter of 2022.
The national grid, according to the national control centre, can currently wheel 3,500 megawatts under the prevailing outages associated with system collapse. But the system will since be challenges with more input as more generation plants are brought online.
Mr Garba explained that the grid has suffered obsolescence and required huge investments in modernization and upgrade. He added that government has so far infused about N3.0 trillion in repositioning the transmission grid to wheel power generation output from remote plant sites to urban demand centres.
In the distribution segment of the electricity industry, Mr Garba said, government is providing the lead with investment plan of over N100 billion to assist the players in the market strengthen their networks and provide metered access to consumers.
He added that all private investments and sundry interventions under the Presidential Power Initiative have been approved by NERC, noting that some partners, including Siemens, have progressed to appointment of contractors for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) on grid expansion projects.
According to Mr Garba, NERC has further required the distribution companies to rise to the challenge of positioning for the expected jump in electricity demand in the coming five years, explaining that there would be need to sink significant investments in the network in meeting the new demand outlook in the industry.
Mrs Garba said NERC was also receiving bids for local production and procurement of meters as part of measures to close the existing gap for 8.0 million meters in the domestic power distribution market under the first phase of the prevailing metering project.
Garba said an eight million metering gap currently exists in the industry but added that there is no time frame to close the gap as there will still be the need for new meters and replacement programmes.
He said NERC has required each of the distribution companies to submit five years performance improvement indices and capital expenditure (CAPEX) plans as part of measures to improve capacity and efficiencies in the target period between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2026.
