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Nigeria loses 1,500MW of electricity

By on February 24, 2015

DESPITE claims by President Goodluck Jonathan that he had delivered on his promise to supply electric power to Nigerians, the total energy sent out to electricity consumers across the country as of February 17, 2015 stood at 3,424.11 megawatts though the average national demand is 12,800m.

This, however, was in sharp contrast to the recent claim by the Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo that power generation was hovering around 5,000MW.

By implication, the country is losing over 1,500MW of electricity, and according to the minister, this loss is largely due to vandalism of pipelines that transport gas to the power generation plants.

Nebo had told President Goodluck Jonathan and guests at the inauguration of the new turbine unit at the Egbin Power Station in Lagos on Saturday that the power sector had recorded a huge success.

The minister had said, “Power generation in the country today has improved tremendously with actual generation/transmission capacity consistently hovering around 5,000MW, up from 2,800MW in 2011.

“Currently, the major challenge to increased power generation is limitation in gas supply as a result of the activities of vandals who are bent on visiting hardship on the entire nation.”

However, official figures from the Federal Ministry of Power on Sunday showed that the peak generation on February 17 was 3,768.2MW, as against a peak demand of 12,800MW.

Energy generation was put at 3,494.96MW, while the energy sent out was 3,424.11MW.

The highest peak generated power was 4,517.6MW. This figure, however, is 482.4MW less than the 5,000MW claim by the minister.

Nebo had stated that the sector would soon record significant inflow of generated electricity, adding that with the new unit, the owners of the Egbin Power Plant had accomplished the feat of bringing the facility back to its original installed capacity of 1,320MW.

He said, “Similar successes are being recorded by other Independent Power Plants such as the Ughelli Power Plant, where the capacity now stands at 610MW, up from 160MW at handover, with a target of 850MW at end-2015.

“The hydro power stations are also hard at work to revamp capacity at Kainji, Jebba and Shiroro.”

A statement by the ministry also stated that the Kainji Power Plant would in the next two weeks be able to produce 230MW, up from 80MW.

The ministry said the “World Bank is retrofitting three more units to add 340MW by the end of March,” adding that the sixth units in the Jebba Power Plant were undergoing procurement to add 96MW to the plant’s original capacity of 450MW.

For the Shiroro Power Plant, it said “three units at 450MW are on stream; the fourth unit to be added soon to bring capacity to 600MW.”

 

[Punch]