The maintenance of broken down turbines
at the nation’s hydro-electric plants, enhanced their generating
capacity during the increased circle of rainfall and water levels, and
contributed substantially to the current addition of more power to the
National Grid in spite of the vandalism of power assets.
The Minister of
Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, explained yesterday, when
he made a presentation at the Wilson Centre, Washington DC, USA. He said
the repair works and maintenance were carried out on the hitherto
abandoned turbines, as part of steps taken to achieve incremental power.
Making a presentation on the theme, “Leadership and the Politics of
Reforms in Africa: Lessons from Nigeria”, the Minister said electricity
supply increased by 400 Megawatts in the last two weeks.
He recalled that over 3000MW of power
had been lost over the last six months due to consistent vandalism and
sabotage of oil and gas pipelines and assets. “The hydros are giving us
almost 400MW of power and that is a lot of power given our situation.
And we have added about 1MW of Solar and there is more coming; so I
think we are on our way.” The minister had earlier prom- ised that
current boost in power would be further strengthened by various
transmission projects currently being carried out in several axis of the
nation’s six geo-political zones.
Coming against the back- ground of
complaints in some quarters that transmission was the weakest link in
the power chain, Fashola, said progress was being made in the expansion
of transmission adding, however, that it would be consistent with
achieving incremental power within the value chain. In the area of
projects aimed at achieving incremental power, Fashola, who said the
focus of government was mainly on the energy mix initiative to diversify
energy source, listed such projects to include the Zungeru Power plant
where work is nearing completion after more than two years of suspension
of work and the Azura Power Plant in Edo State where, according to him,
work was also suspended for over two years due to court issues.
Noting that there were also many smaller
hydro-plants like Chalawa hydro plant, Ikere hydro plant, the minister
said there are more than 40 such small hydro-plants which government was
also trying to bring into procurement.
“We have completed the business plan on
eight and we are trying to see if we can get that on. That would help
our rural electrification projects because those dams are in the rural
areas,” said Fashola. On Solar energy, the minister, said the country
has a lot of sunlight that could be used when the radiation was optimum
and efficient during the day and also in parts of the country where the
radiation levels were most prolific so that efficiency would be
delivered.
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