Power sector loses N540b to gas, water, transmission

Nigeria’s electricity sector lost more than N540 billion to series of constraints that beset its operations in 2017, which made it difficult for the operators to supply the needed power to consumers.

According to the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry Statistics (NESI), the sector lost more than N1.5 billion daily to gas, water and transmission lines.

It disclosed that the sector generated 99,000mega watt/hour (MWh/day) a day on the same day, but lost about 59,424MWh per day to the constraints, which have lingered for several years.

Speaking on the issue, Professor of Electrical and Electronics Engineering and Deputy Dean, School of Applied Engineering, College of Engineering, Covenant University, Ota, Claudius Awosope, stated that the recent history of NESI has painted a very pathetic picture of the maintenance culture in Nigeria.

According to him, this has hampered the industry from meeting the statutory obligations of providing cheap, clean and efficient source of energy to the electrical loads.

He added that the national development has been seriously slowed down.

“To this end, it is clear from what is on ground now that current and existing state of the facilities and equipment in the industry has led to the below average in the performance of this equipment. This poor performance is very strongly linked with poor maintenance culture by the stakeholders,” he said.

The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer and Chief Electrical Inspector of the Federation, The Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA), Peter O. Ewesor, said that the agency has commenced a nationwide technical monitoring and evaluation of the primary 33KV feeder lines and associated 33/11KV injection substations with supply source from 330/132/33KV transmission substations.

According to him, the exigency of the exercise is to identify constraints militating against quick realization of the Federal Government’s policy and efforts for sustainability of the incremental, steady and uninterrupted power supply as they are achieved through the 33KV primary feeder lines to the 33/11KV injection substations and subsequently through the 11KV feeder lines and associated distribution transformers and finally to the consumers.

He noted that this is to identify the high risk and technical loss points along the 33KV feeder lines.

“Again this is to enable NEMSA find out the causes/reasons for load rejection by the DisCos and to make recommendations for dealing with identified issues/challenges.

“The importance of the exercise cannot be overemphasised in light of the spate of the increasing number of electrical accidents and incidents, power failures/outages at the downstream-of the power value chain (power distribution networks) even when there is a huge increase in power generation in the grid system”, he said.

He noted that the exercise, which commenced on October 18, 2017, has so far covered Abuja, Ikeja, Kano, Benin, Port Harcourt, Kaduna and Enugu DisCo’s networks and is still ongoing.

Ewesor added that the exercise will identify high risk defective networks that pose serious threats and danger to operators’ operational staff and the general public for immediate attention and correction/rectification by respective DisCos and TCN.