Nigeria has successfully completed 8 multi million power plants under the Federal Government’s National Independent Power Project (NIPP) with an aim of increasing electricity generation in the highly populated country.
According to the company behind the construction of the plants, the Niger-Delta Power Holding Company(NDPHC), the plants installed include; 750MW Olorunsogo 11, 450MW Sapele, 434MW Geregu 11, 450MW Omotosho 11, 450MW Ihovbor, 450MW Alaoji, 563MW Calabar and 225MW Gbarain.
“The NDPHC has completed 2,194km of 330KV transmission lines and 809km of 132KV transmission lines;this is an increase of 46 per cent and 13 per cent respectively over the pre-NIPP status of grid infrastructure,” said NDPHC in a statement.
Additionally the company also constructed a total of 2,600km of 11kv and 1,700km of 33kv distribution lines for improving access to electricity. The NDPHC assets are the backbone of Nigeria’s power infrastructure. In grid instability, NIPP plants provide about 265MW of spinning reserves to facilitate grid responsiveness during disturbances on the transmission network.
The massive construction of these power projects has prevented the total collapse of electricity supply in Nigeria. The NDPHC noted that electricity supply has stabilized while incremental power supply is ongoing.
“When most of the NIPP projects are completed and are operational, power supply to Nigerians is expected to be better and drive the economy,” said NDPHC.
The NDPHC however hinted power distribution chain as the major hitch with the power supply in Nigeria and urged the government to give serious consideration to waving duties on equipment for power duties for power projects.
The company further suggested that power distribution companies should have the capacity to take more than what the transmission gives out. This enables redundancies to decrease at the different levels and minimize losses while power is being transmitted from one location to another.
