Africa oil & power breaks mold of energy conferences

By David Agba
Abuja

In its efforts to boost power supply in the country,Shiroro Hydroelectric Power Station plans to construct a 300megawatts (Mw) photo voltaic  solar power plant on the existing plant premises  which was concessioned to  the North- South Power Company  (NSP) Limited  on November 1, 2013, the  firm’s Chief Technical Officer, Mr. Roland Lwiindi has disclosed.

He told the Post Privatisation Monitoring Team of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) that was on a monitoring exercise at the power station in Shiroro, Niger State recently that once approval was obtained from the necessary authorities, its first phase would come on stream in 2017 and it would be the first of its kind in Africa.
According to him, when completed the plant would add 300mega watts of electricity to the existing 600mega watts. He added that the plant was at present generating 50% of its installed capacity.

In his remarks, the Chief Operations Officer of the plant, Abdul-Aziz Daudu informed the BPE monitors that since takeover by the new investors, the generators and three out of the four turbines had been overhauled to boost power output from the power plant. He said plans were on to overhaul the fourth turbine.
Leader of the BPE monitoring team, Mr. Abdullahi Shuaibu commended the management for the strides achieved since take over and noted that it was an attestation to the gains of privatisation.