Teddy Oscar, Abuja
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has debunked any pronouncements that Nigeria would generate 10,000 megawatts of electricity by December 2014.
Speaking on Wednesday at a monthly meeting with chief executive officers of generation, distribution companies and TCN in Abuja, Engr. Sam Amadi, NERC chairman, hinted that the actual technical calculation NERC released with the Transmission Companies of Nigeria (TCN), generation and distribution companies indicates that power generation would hit 4,500mw by June and 6000mw by December 2014.
Amadi disclosed that 10, 000mw was never on the agenda of the regulator for this year, but observed that there was a marked difference between political and technical targets.
He, however, assured that the utilities were working very hard to improve power supply, he urged Nigerians to pay their electricity bills.
Amadi also who hinted that the stakeholders spoke on the need to unlock gas and ensure that more gas regularly go to the power plants, if 6,000mw would be achieved by December.
He announced that the commission has secured the permission of President Goodluck Jonathan to disconnect government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) that fail to pay their bills.
“Let’s put it this way, targets could be political and could be technical. When the Multi Year Tariff Order (MYTO) benchmarked the targets, based on the feedbacks we get from generators, for example, for the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) in our MYTO, we benchmarked 7200mw for December 2013. That is based on the assumption of gas supply and commissioning of NIPP plants and the existing capacities of the successor companies.
“That is a technical benchmarking based on feedbacks. Now we did not do anywhere near that because we didn’t have enough gas. What is going on now is that we are going back to doing reviews.
“When we do the tariff reviews, we will now tell you this is what we think will happen in 2014, 2015 and so on. There is also the government agenda. If the minister says he wants everybody to do minimum of 4,500mw, we take that and we work with our people and start to work with the system to work to that point. I want us to get it clear.
“There is regulated benchmarking which is based on the feedback and the kinds of technical questions that we get from the operators. We look at gas supply, we look at their capacity, we look at the programs they want to implement. For example, Transcorp Ugheli is proposing some investment in capacity to increase generation, Egbin has applied to increase capacity out of a plant that was refurbished for another 200mw. Those are the ones that we can predict.
“I want to say it that the government is right to set benchmarks and what we do is within technical possibilities, to meet those benchmarks. And 4,500mw by June is what they are working on. We can exceed that, but it is a target that we are all working on. We are not just working towards 4,50mw by June, we want to ensure that more effective supply, distribution of effective power gets to Nigerians,” Amadi said.
Speaking of a scorecard developed to benchmark the performance of the utilities, Amadi said: “We have developed scorecards and make sure that at every monthly meeting. We get presentations on what the utilities are doing and efforts that they making to improve quality supply. We be benchmark and create a scorecard process. We will provide incentives for discos and gencos to keep improving.”
Speaking in support of the NERC boss, Mr. Mack Kast, TCN managing director, noted that TCN is working towards an expansion plans that would see it able to evacuate 4500mw by June, 6000mw by December and 10,000mw by 2017.
“We do believe that the power sector is making progress. It is now more compact than it was some years ago. It is critical that we are meeting regularly, identifying issues and resolving. TCN is an important link between the generation and distribution companies. We are working diligently to try to grow out capacity and today we are successfully in doing that.
“We always want to be able to evacuate more power than the generation capacity. To make sure that that happens, we are embarking on a 20 year master plan for the nation. In the meantime, we are working on a five year extension plan.
“With the five year extension plan, we are committing to at the end of June this year, a 4500mw evacuation capacity, 6000mw by the end of December this year, and then moving up to 10,000mw evacuation capacity by the end of 2017. To do that, it takes money, it takes effort, it takes times no so on. We are working hard in that area.
“We are working on independent funding in addition to funding from government. We are working on an investment conference a week after next. We are putting bankable projects and hoping to get some investors to come in. We are optimistic to that we are going to get necessary support,” Kast said.
