Planned Transmission Repairs to Cut Power Supply by 300MegaWatts

Nigeria’s unstable power generation and supply capacity is expected to drop  further in the next couple of weeks following the planned shutdown of the 300 megawatts (MW) Agip Okpai power plant in Delta State.

A communique of the monthly meeting held in Kano between Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola and operators in the country, revealed that the closure was necessary to allow the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) undertake repair works on its vandalized 55 kilometre transmission line within the region.

The communique which was sent to Thisday on Monday, June 13, in Abuja, revealed that the repair work would last for two weeks, within which the 300MW plant would be shut and not contribute to the nation’s power supply system which as at yesterday had just 2,374MW to distribute to homes and offices in the country.

It said the three hydro power plants; Kainji; Jebba and Shiroro have agreed to increase their productivity to cushion the impacts of the drop in capacity for the period.

“TCN also stated its intention to make a public announcements of upcoming maintenance projects which may negatively impact power supply.

“TCN informed the meeting of the need to shut down the 300MW Okpai power plant so that a tower which was earlier vandalised can be repaired to restore a 55km transmission line.

“The hydroelectric power stations (Kainji, Jebba and Shiroro) agreed to work with TCN to boost output during the two-week outage period to minimise the effect of the outage,” the communique read.

It also explained that the TCN had recently completed 20 transmission projects in Gwagwalada, Kaduna, Afam, Apo, Lekki and Omotosho, adding that this will improve power distribution in Abuja and Lagos.
TCN, it added announced that it was working hard to restore power to Maiduguri in Borno State by next month after a long period of outage.

The communique said an estimated 2,000MW of electricity will be added to the country’s generation capacity by mid-2017 following plans by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to complete and commission four infrastructure projects to improve gas supply to power plants over the next few months through September 30 2016.