The month of December is a few weeks away and as Nigerians watch to see if the Federal Government will meet its target to generate 6000MW of power, some players in the nation’s power industry say even if it is successful, the country cannot use more than 4000MW.
The experts say there is no infrastructure to distribute more than 4,000MW of power and any attempt to distribute 6000MW will damage the existing facilities.
Close to the promised land
Lanre Babalola, the Minister of Power, while presenting the score-card of his ministry’s achievements, programmes and activities, recently, said the government will keep its promise, as the total generation capacity available as at last month stood at about 5,522MW and is expected to improve.
However, electricity workers note that power distribution poses a greater challenge to the nation than its generation.
Joe Ajaero, the General Secretary of the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE), said the current transmission and distribution infrastructure in the industry lack the capacity to carry any load in excess of 4,000MW.
Although, Sola Akinironye, the Executive Director (Transmission Services), the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), is reported to have said that the company has the capacity to evacuate any volume of electricity generated throughout the country, Mr. Ajaero, argued, “At no point in this country’s history has PHCN been able to evacuate more than 4000MW.
“I still doubt whether the transmission and distribution infrastructure in the country can carry a capacity above 4,000MW, because all the transformers in the country are overloaded,” Mr. Ajaero insisted, pointing out that the highest capacity government has ever reached was about 3,900MW during former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s tenure.
According to him, the situation in the industry is such that about 100 customers are supposed to be connected to a transformer, but over 200 are hooked up, adding that any attempt to exceed 4,000MW might result in a systems collapse.
“The original plan as contained in the Rilwanu Lukman Power Sector Reform Committee’s report was to provide 4,000MW by December 2008, 6,000MW by December 2009. If by December 2008 government was not able to generate 4,000MW, and still has not been able to do so by October 2009, the possibility of providing 6,000MW by December 2009 is remote. If government pushes more than 4,000MW into the system that is not used to carrying more than 2,500MW without first gradually experimenting whether the system has the capacity to carry additional capacity, there will be system collapse,” Mr. Ajaero said.
Besides, he noted, even if the Niger Delta crisis is resolved, and the nation is able to attain the 6000MW generation capacity target, the volume of electricity that will be available to consumers will still not be up to 6000MW because of the transmission and distribution losses that occur as a result of aging infrastructure.
“Today, the nation has over 4000MW of idle capacity that is generated, but cannot be distributed due to the problem of distribution infrastructure,” he disclosed.
Working out the mathematics
A power consultant, Goody Uguzie, argued that irrespective of the claims by government’s representatives, not more than an average of 3,500MW is achievable by the end of next month, in view of the huge shortfall in the daily gas supply from the multinational oil companies.
Militancy in the Niger Delta saw the vandalism of gas pipelines owned by Chevron and Shell, which are still undergoing repairs. Mr. Uguzie, who said the industry will require over 600 million standard cubic feet (scf) of gas per day to realise the 6,000MW target, observed that the industry is running on a shortfall of about 250 million standard cubic feet from Shell Petroleum Development Company and Chevron Niger Limited, which are the only two oil companies currently involved in serious gas supply activities for the industry.
“From the SPDC’s Okoloma gas facility, about 150 million scf/d is supllied. If about 100 million scf/d is taken to run Afam 1-V power plant, what would be left would be about 150 million scf/d. With Chevron delivering about 250 million scf/d for Nigerian Gas Company (NGC) to evacuate, the total volume of gas available would be about 400 million scf/d, that is a shortfall of about 200 million scf/d, which nobody is sure where that is coming from.
“At best, what the country might get will be 3,500MW by December. Even 4,000MW is an ambitious estimate,” he said.
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