NDPHC Takes “Light Up Nigeria” Campaign To Lagos
* Mr Joseph Chiedu Ugbo, MD/CEOWhile noting that NDPHC also owes some stakeholders, Ugbo said the Federal Government under President Bola Ahmed has taken a soft and citizens’ oriented approach by not increasing tariffs but assured that it would find a way to address the shortfalls in payment as per the actual consumption and the tariff.
Ugbo further said: “To reasonably resolve the challenges to power plants’ operations and increase electricity supply to homes and businesses, NDPHC’s Light-up Nigeria initiative is to explore not only the opportunities under the Eligible Customer Regulations and Electricity Act 2023 but also bilateral power sales in collaboration with Discos and other bulk purchasers under trading arrangements will ensure that investment is mobilized for end-to-end solutions that will guarantee that electricity is delivered to customers and NDPHC is paid for the electricity generated.
“At the core of NDPHC’s initiatives is to prioritise high-value power sale opportunities with bulk purchasers and Discos, which under Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) have significant power supply demands across their franchise areas. The rationale for this approach is that projects delivered in collaboration with these potential bulk purchasers are likely to generate significantly greater volumes of power sales under bankable arrangements.”
He, however, said that NDPHC has currently allocated a maximum dispatch space of 975MW (peak period) and 757MW at off-peak (despite often being substantially mechanically available).
In Ugbo words: “Talking more about constraints, evacuation limitation is further exacerbated by systems operations (SO’s) frequent start-up & shut down instructions to the plants ostensibly for frequency and load control to ensure system safety and reliability but resulting in increased turbine stress, more unscheduled outages, and significant maintenance costs.
“Another challenge is gas supply and transportation constraints. There is an unavailability of sufficient volumes of gas to guarantee generation up to the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) allocated evacuation capacity of 975MW let alone the full capacity of its power plants.
“Calabar is the only plant with a full gas supply. Plants in the western axis require about 150MMSCF/day to meet the TCN-allocated evacuation capacity of 535MW (Peak).
“Gas supply to western axis power plants is further challenged by low pressure on NGIC gas pipelines –ELPS & Oben-Ajaokuta. Gas suppliers want higher gas tariff beyond industry approved gas tariff ($2.50 vs. $2.18).”
Other Senior management team who took their turn to address the media gathering include Executive Director(Networks), Engr Ifeoluwa Oyedele, Executive Director(Generation), Mr. Kassim Abdullahi and Executive Director,(Legal Services) Dr. Steven Andzenge, MON amongst others.
