Afam VI power plant in Rivers State is ready to deliver its net dependable capacity of 624MW into the Nigerian national grid barring any regulator’s restrictions, even at a time power generation has suffered a deep plunge following reported outage of some thermal power stations.
Managing Director of The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC) and Country Chair, Shell Companies in Nigeria, Mr. Osagie Okunbor, told newsmen in Abuja that the SPDC Joint Venture-owned combined cycle power plant is ably maintained to consistently deliver its net dependable capacity of 624MW from an installed capacity of 650MW with its three gas turbines and one steam turbine.
“In 2017 alone, Afam VI supplied approximately 14 per cent of Nigerian’s grid-connected electricity and the plant has delivered over 25.97 Trillion Watt-Hour of electricity into the Nigerian grid in the last 10 years,” Okunbor said. “What is most exciting is that the plant has achieved this milestone while also touching the lives of community people and helping youths to acquire key engineering skills.”
According to him, the operations at Afam VI have generated subcontract opportunities and employment for over 150 people from the 16 host communities. It also provided hands-on and offshore training for 30 youths in Electrical, Mechanical and Instrumentation engineering on Combined Cycle Power Plant operations and maintenance. All the trainees are employable in the Nigerian power industry.
The power plant also won the Best Company in Climate Action Award in the 2016 edition of Sustainability, Enterprise, Responsibility Awards for Corporate Social Responsibility (SERAs–CSR), an annual event to celebrate organisations that invest resources to improve the socio-economic living conditions of people in Nigeria and Africa.
Afam VI uses combined cycle gas turbine technology that burns 40 percent less gas than plants using older open cycle technologies. This also contributes significantly to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
In November 2017, the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission renewed SPDC JV’s Afam VI power generation licence for another 10 years, and in December 2017, the company signed an interim multi-year agreement with General Electric to improve the power plant’s availability, reliability and output for up to 200,000 Nigerian homes, while decreasing its operational costs.
The agreement covered planned maintenance for the four turbines and upgrade of the gas turbines to help increase the plant capacity by up to 30MW while increasing its efficiency and significantly saving fuel and reducing CO2 emissions.
As a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project under the United Nations Executive Board for Climate Change, Afam VI Power Plant targets to eliminate over 500,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year, while also maintaining excellent safety standards.
Located in Afam village in Oyigbo Local Government Area, the plant receives gas from SPDC JV’s gas plant at neighbouring Okoloma village.
