‘Govt needs to create conducive environment to attract investors in power sector’

Frank Li is the Managing Director for Huawei Technologies Nigeria. The company, which is already a major player in the information technology sector, has recently declared its interest to participate in the country’s quest for regular power supply. In this interview with ROSELINE OKERE, he believed that right expertise and conducive environment would attract the required investment to drive the industry.

NIGERIA has been trying to solve electricity challenge without much success. What do you think the country should do to provide regular electricity in the country?

Like many African countries, Nigeria faces electricity shortage. An estimated 41 per cent of Nigerian businesses generate their own power supply to augment the national grid supply according to a recent World Bank Report.

As the population grows and the living standards improve, more and more Nigerian people start to use household appliances. Therefore, currently more device installations are required to meet the increasing electricity demand. More power plants are urgently required to overcome the ever-growing electricity shortage.

It is reported that over 56 per cent of the Nigerian populace has no access to grid electricity and those who are connected to the grid face substantial power interruptions. Systemic issues affect all phases of the power value chain from generation to distribution thereby forcing Nigerians to rely on self-generation.

In addition, demand-side management proves to be ineffective in reducing line loss in electric power transmission and distribution. In Nigeria, the booming economy directly increases the electricity requirements. Grids have been constructed in urban areas, but not in rural areas, so that some poor regions have no access to electricity.

Nigeria needs to cultivate more engineers and participators in power sector to have better planning of the power generation, distribution and so on.

The government is expected to create a more favorable business environment to attract more investors to power sector.

Electricity consumers in Nigeria have been complaining about estimated billing. Does your advance technology address any in all of these issues?

Huawei has provided the key technologies in the electric power industry for over past two decades, serving more than 160 power companies with its innovative ICT solutions in 65 countries worldwide helping customers build a better connected smart grid.

In Nigeria, Huawei is working with local partners to deploy off-grid solar power station in rural area, which bring lights to thousands of houses in the villages. It provides another solution for the power shortage in Nigeria by renewable energy.

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) solutions have been proposed to Nigerian electric power companies to reduce the transmission line loss and to improve the efficiency of metering and billing.

Huawei’s AMI solutions with self developed HiPLC chip breakthrough the challenges of power industry broadband PLC technology to guarantee a 100 per cent success of daily reading, meeting the high requirement of accurate metering.
With the deployment of Huawei smart meters, the management line losses are reduced. AMI simplifies the interaction between power companies and customers by allowing power companies to keep precise control on power consumption and consumer-use optimization. Consumers can pay by real-time consumption instead of an estimated prepayment.
In Brazil, the Huawei transmission solution helps Copel build an all service network, simplifying the network structure and reducing O&M costs by 20 per cent.

In Ethiopia, Huawei assists Ethiopia Electric Power Corporation in building an optical fiber composite overhead round 10 monster covering over 1,000 kilometres paid in the solid foundation for power network automation.

In Australia, the Huawei AMI solution enables a university customer to implement smart building management, reducing the annual power consumption by 62.5 per cent through remote control of lights, air conditioning systems and other devices.

In China, the Huawei telepresence system provides the China State Grid, the largest power company in the world, with an administrative and emergency video conference system reducing business travel cost by 30 per cent and improving overall work efficiency.

Do we see Huawei having the same success it recorded in the ICT sector in the power sector?

With increasing demand of power consumption, electricity is one of the most important industry of Huawei, in Africa , we believe power grid companies are facing strong challenges of enhance operation efficiency , therefore, we believe helping our customer achieving their objectives would be priority. As we show in this exhibit, Huawei ICT technology and solutions including AMI, transmission, smart grid connections are all aimed at help our customer achieve higher efficiency and lower operation cost .