Former Minister of Power, Professor Barth Nnaji, has called for an annual amendment of the electricity tariff in order to improve power supply in the country.
Nnaji also recommended that private sector should be allowed to build super grid with a view to improving power supply nationwide.
The former, who spoke in an interview recently said: “So, there are needs for adjustments and people need to be able to get the power. What this means is that the entire value chain needs to be worked on and that is really the problem.
“Now, the disagreement is about the tariff. Tariff is supposed to be amended every year; it could go down or up depending on the country’s currency”.
On the national grid, the former minister said: “One is for government to find competent private sector companies to build the super grid in segments so that the entire segment is done. That was the whole plan and it would provide fundamental relieve in transmission.
“Countries just don’t have one network, they typically have more. There are some countries that have 200 kV lines just to ensure that huge power plants like Mambila, which is 3000 megawatt, has to transmit its power.
“We are not going to use the kind of grid we have now to do the collage, we need a proper grid and we need to plan these things in advance and to rigorously follow through. Imagine if we have started doing it from six years ago, we would have really advanced in it.
“We even had an idea that if we had issues, there was a power plant that was at the planning stage in Congo – a 40,000-megawatt power plant on the grid. We could build a thousand kilometer line from there to Nigeria with the same super grid and it would come to Calabar and then distribute in Nigeria, using our super grid.
“There are all kinds of things and when we talk about collaboration on power in the whole of Africa, these things are possible. Also, you can generate locally and sell excess power to other countries”.
Benin Disco requires 1400MW to guarantee steady power supply
The Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC), has said that not less than 1400MW was needed to guarantee steady power supply to 750,000 households and 13 million people in Edo, Delta, Ekiti and Ondo State.
The spokesman of the company, Mr. Tayo Adekunle, who made the disclosure in an interview, appealed to customers to understand the value chain in the power sector, saying as at Monday only 325.34MW was supplied to BEDC to distribute to customers in its area of coverage.
Adekunle explained that BEDC on its part had embarked on network expansion and provided or repaired faulty transformers ranging from 300KVA to 2.5KVA, all in a bid to improve power supply.
He added that the company had also embarked on employment and training of fresh graduates to bridge the manpower gap in the sector.
“BEDC is only a retailer of electricity and not a generating outfit, and as such could only distribute what they get in form of power.
“As I speak with you, we only get nine per cent of what is generated as power from the generating company; as at Monday July 2, the BEDC got only 325.34MW from the 3614MW generated by GENCO.
“This is a far cry from the total of 1400MW needed to service our clients in the four states of Ondo, Ekiti, Edo and Delta that we cover,” he said.
He further said to satisfy its customers the company introduced a load shedding system of three hours on and three hours off.
“The BEDC is not isolated from the limitations within the industry, and we have been trying our best to provide safe and reliable electricity to our customers,” he said.
He commended the efforts of the federal government towards diversifying the sources of power generation through renewable energy, coal and other sources, which he said would boost power supply.
On the issue of metering, Adekunle said BEDC had achieved 65.30 per cent progress in its area of coverage, leaving a metering gap of 34.7 per cent.
FG receives 655 abandoned power equipment
The Federal government has disclosed that it has received 655 out of over 800 containers of power equipment stranded in the nation’s ports.
The Managing Director of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN),Usman Gur, who disclosed this in Abuja recently, regretted that some of the containers were in the ports for over 15years,while others had been auctioned.
He also said since he assumed the mantle of leadership of the organisation last year, the TCN has delivered least cost transmission expansion masterplan and was able to present to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission the generation adequacy report
“We achieved frequency control of 49.50HZ to 50:50HZ and developed a plan that will enable us move to 49:80HZ to 50:20HZ.We have raised the capacity of the grid which used to be only 5500MW to 7124MW as at December 2017 when the last simulation was done.
“We have delivered a report that reduced the bloated structure of Transmission Company of Nigeria. We have restructured our project management technique through the decentralization and creation of four project management units’’
