Sunday, 27 September 2015

Nigeria’s electricity generation increases by 871MW in two weeks


 By Oluwagbenga Bankole
Nigerians hope of enjoying more hours of electricity supply have received a boost this is because the country’s electricity generation has increased by 871.9 megawatt in two weeks from 3700mw it recorded two weeks ago to 4,078.20MW.

According to data obtained by Nigerian NewsDirect from Federal Ministry of Power the new electricity peak generation is still below the Peak Generation level of 4,810.7MW achieved on August 25th of this year, although the country’s power generation capacity currently stands at 6,000 MWs and is to the expected to grow to 40,000 MW by 2020.

It also put the nation’s daily average energy distributed at 3,987.27mw, while Peak Demand forecast still stands at 12,800MW.

Meanwhile our correspondent gathered that the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company and Eko Electricity Distribution Company account for over 40 per cent of power consumption in Nigeria.
 Lagos which used to be the country’s political capital before Abuja, remained Nigeria’s commercial and industrial hub with a large concentration of industries in the state and the adjoining Ogun State.

Nigerians in the nook and crannies of the country acknowledged that power supply has improved drastically since the inception of this present administration. The achievement according to experts in the industry was achieved because vandalisation of gas pipelines which supply power plants in the country have reduced drastically.  

The improvement has made households and businesses experiencing more hours of electricity unlike before. Running of generators all through the night have no doubt reduced to the barest minimum.

Expects have predicted that the current improvement in power supply if sustain will help the nation’s goal of being among the top 20 economies of the world in 2020, a mileage that is merely seven years away.

To sustain the current trend, the former Minister of Power, Professor Barth Nnaji urged President Muhammadu Buhari to sustain the power sector road map.

Speaking exclusively with Nigerian NewsDirect, Nnaji also said that for the sector to achieve its aim of giving Nigerians interrupted power supply, the sector requires integrity at various level.

He noted that people should continue to do the right thing for the country, adding the there should be no compromise.

The Chief Executive Officer of Geometric Power Limited noted that power reform was informed by government’s decision to resolve the problems of power in the country and disclosed that most of the pillars of the reform have been put in place.

 “The government at some point decided that okay, we are going to solve this problem of electricity, and that’s why we talk about power reform. I will say that most of the pillars of power reform are in place, all that remains now is implementation. The pillars for example, we have a regulatory commission, we have bulk filter who buys power from whoever produces power. We have appropriate tariff regime etc., so all the things are in place but implementation must be correct,” he stated.

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