The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Electricity sector

  • FG invites investors to boost electricity sector

    FG invites investors to boost electricity sector

    The Federal Government has extended an invitation to foreign investors with the assurance the electricity sector is ripe for investment and transformative growth. 

     Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, gave the invite during his address at the African Energy Summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

    Speaking to a gathering of selected investors and development partners ahead of the Africa Heads of State Energy Summit, Edun stated the government’s commitment to achieving macroeconomic stability, advancing clean energy goals, and ensuring universal energy access. 

    He described the country’s electricity sector as a pivotal area for investment and collaboration, aligning with Nigeria’s broader energy transition goals under the “Mission 300” initiative.

    A statement from the ministry said Edun detailed the Federal Government overnment’s focus on ensuring energy security while pursuing the global shift toward sustainable energy solutions. According to the minister, the Nigerian electricity sector offers vast opportunities for foreign and domestic investors. With a focus on clean energy transition and grid modernization, the government aims to increase the capacity and reliability of the power sector, unlocking its potential to drive economic growth.

    Edun also informed the audience that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would personally participate in the summit, signifying Nigeria’s commitment to leading conversations on energy access and clean energy in Africa. The president’s attendance is expected to strengthen collaborative efforts among African nations, investors, and development partners toward achieving the continent’s energy and climate goals.

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    “Nigeria’s electricity sector is poised for transformative growth, and investors are invited to be a part of this exciting journey,” Edun said. He expressed optimism that Nigeria’s robust investment climate, supported by the government’s economic reforms, would attract global stakeholders to help drive progress in the energy sector.

    “With one of the largest populations in Africa, Nigeria’s demand for reliable electricity continues to grow, presenting immense opportunities for investment. The federal government has already taken steps to reform the power sector, focusing on expanding access to renewable energy sources, encouraging private-sector participation, and ensuring regulatory stability to attract investors.

    “As President Tinubu is set to join the discussions, Nigeria aims to build on its energy ambitions, securing investments that will empower its citizens, strengthen the economy, and contribute to Africa’s clean energy future,” he said. 

  • Safety in electricity sector can’t be compromised, says Rep panel

    Safety in electricity sector can’t be compromised, says Rep panel

    The chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Safety Standards and Regulations, Hon. Sulaiman Abubakar Gumi, has said that safety in Nigeria’s electricity sector cannot be compromised.

    Speaking during a briefing at the National Assembly Complex in Abuja, he announced plans to collaborate with the Association for Public Policy Analysis and other key stakeholders to organize the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry Safety Conference.

    Despite the federal government’s efforts to address safety concerns, Gumi noted persistent challenges, including vandalism, theft, unlicensed electrical installations, and the use of substandard materials.

    “The Committee identified the Power Sector as an important sector whose safety standards and regulatory policies should be observed for effective legislative actions.

    “The federal government of Nigeria has made a commitment towards enhancing safety standards and regulations in the electricity sector by ascertaining laws, regulations, and established institutions to coordinate, implement, and enforce the laws.

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    “This is with the overall aim of ensuring that electricity service delivery in the country is carried out in a safe, secured, and qualitative manner, devoid of loss of lives and properties.

    “Moreso, to relieve the occurrences of incidences such as electrical accidents, electrocution, distortion of the functionality of electricity networks and grids, theft and vandalism, and so on.

    “Despite the efforts of the Government in creating laws, setting up regulatory policies, establishing institutions of State, and providing guidelines, codes, and rules which operators in the sector should abide by, problems still exist,” he said.

    He said the situation calls for concern on compliance and enforcement of laws and policies strengthened to enhance safety standards and regulations.

    He said stakeholders expected at the conference have identified opportunities, prospects, and challenges that need to be shared with Nigerian electricity stakeholders operating at state, geo-political zones, and federal levels.

    “This is to take advantage of existing opportunities, explore prospects, and contribute to proffering solutions to challenges of safety standards and regulations in the power sector of the nation.

    “The conference is no doubt going to lay a foundation that will enable the Committee to carry out her constitutional functions of oversight and investigation enshrined in Section 88 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended,” he said.

    He said the main objective of the conference is to bring stakeholders concerned with the design, implementation, and enforcement of safety standards and regulatory policies of the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry together with private sector operators, consumers, and Nigeria’s International Development Partners.

    “This is to appraise opportunities, prospects, and challenges existing in the Safety Standards and Regulation segment of NESI to come up with a Legislative, investigative, and oversight compliance as well, as enforcement of electricity safety standards and regulation policy document,” he said.

    He said it aims to develop an all-inclusive policy document that will strengthen the oversight and investigative responsibilities of the Committee to enhance safe, secured, quality electricity service delivery in the country.

    Gumi said it would also provide opportunities for stakeholders responsible for training and capacity building in NESI to enhance the capacity of persons carrying out electricity installations to professionally apply safety standards and regulations.

    He added that it would strengthen compliance and enforcement strategies for the prevention of vandalism, theft, false declarations, etc through exposition on the offences and penalties segment of the Electricity Act 2023.

    “The conference aims to build synergy among stakeholders and enhance a collective approach to deal with the menace of manufacture, importation, marketing, and use of sub-standard electrical materials and quackery in the nation’s power sector.

    “It aims to address the challenges of importation of substandard solar systems and materials required for execution of renewable energy and climate change related projects, through the articulation of framework for Renewable Energy Safety Standards and Regulations policy.

    “It will also address the nexus between electricity safety standards and regulations, health and construction policies at the Local, State, and Federal Government levels,” he said.

  • Nigerian electricity sector: Way forward

    Nigerian electricity sector: Way forward

    • By Femi Joseph

    The Nigerian power grid has collapsed more than four times in 2024 as of July 2024, which represents a nationwide blackout every quarter. How can a nation as populated as Nigeria struggle to revamp her electricity network and bring it to full reliable capacity? Year over year, Nigerian governments have failed in their promises to ameliorate the debilitating state of the electrical system. The national grid as it is, boasts of a meagre 5000MW available generation capacity for a teeming population of about 200 million people. 

    This is highly shameful to say the least. Are we going to lose out again on the vast resources that we have? The cheapest and most reasonable ways to improve our electricity sector abound, but we can’t utilize them because the wrong hands have been engaged in the critical affairs of our dear nation. Are we about to be blind again the same way we lost opportunities in the gas sector. Recently, a past president of the country was lamenting about how we lost great development opportunity in gas, but instead we were flaring these gases, which polluted our environment simply because we do not have the think-tank that can deliberate and see solutions within us. Is the same loss of vast potential about to happen again in the electricity sector?

    Can the government get serious for once and start engaging experts who understand the technical know-how? The truth is we don’t need to break a sweat, the opportunities abound. Time is of the essence; this is a period to think outside the box and take swift action.

    While the effort by the government to increase generation is laudable, it should be noted that these are high capital cost, long term projects which at the end may not serve the need due to the reducing transmission line capacity, low efficiency of the already degraded transmission network, inadequate real-time supervisory control mechanisms and thermal overload constraints leading to low frequency excursion.

    In recent years there have been advances in the power system leading to a change and modifications in government policies around the world that promote renewable energy integration and energy storage.

    For example, in the United States, the federal government through the Department of Energy formulated policies that enabled increased penetration of solar PVs in the grid, in the form of distributed energy resources (DER) at the industrial, commercial and residential scales. Residential and commercial customers that have solar rooftops are encouraged to export excess energy production to the grid via the bi-directional net energy meter (NEM), which is achievable by a grid following/grid forming dual-mode inverter.

    The dual mode inverter ensures that the customer has the option of utilizing their installed generation sources with or without grid connection. During loss of utility source, the customer inverter configuration can switch to an independent micro-grid mode to serve its local load.

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    The economic disadvantage of this mode is that the converter algorithm is programmed such that the solar power generated is limited by the real-time load demand, however, when in grid-connected mode, the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm of the converter commands the maximum output of the installed solar photovoltaics under the rated insolation, whereby exporting the excess unused power to the grid.

    At the end of each billing cycle, the customer either receives a very low bill or a cheque/credit from the utility company while putting the distribution cost of exporting on the utility lines into consideration. In addition, a special tariff regime known as feed-in tariff (FIT) can be employed for these behind-the-meter (BTM) customers in order to promote renewable grid integration. If similar policies are made within the Nigerian power sector, with some slight modifications, then we can have a system that is on her way to prosperity by having the electricity sector fixed by increasing distributed energy at the medium voltage class with the overall benefit of reducing stress on the transmission network.

    The utility distribution network benefits from the reliability that this technology would add to the system as low voltages often observed on the system and usually at the end of long feeders are improved. It is even more advantageous to the utility is the retail cost of buying local electricity is less or equal to the wholesale cost from the GENCOs.

    An average Nigerian will agree that once the electricity issue is solved in Nigeria, then more than half of the country’s problem will be solved, especially when it is affordable  the end consumers. The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) is highly disjointed from the DISCOs, their nature of relationship is not entirely transparent, and this is greatly hurting businesses and individuals. The proposed solution should address this gap, as it will be customer inclusive through the incentives.

    The Electricity Act that was signed into law by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2023, is a step in the right direction and if enforced will enable faster implementation of the proposed energy solutions in a way that offers more consumer engagement and transparency.

    Furthermore, it will foster more government visibility of activities in the utility companies, and then drive a more effective state-focused regulatory scheme as required by each state of the federation.

    •Dr. Joseph writes from University of Pittsburgh, USA.

  • Electricity sector: Marketplace where entropy reigns supreme

    Electricity sector: Marketplace where entropy reigns supreme

    Entropy is a thermodynamic quantity, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or unpredictability. Note: Electricity generation hinges on Thermodynamic principles. Electricity is seen as basic and essential infrastructure necessary for the welfare of the citizens and growth of the economy; but in Nigeria it is seen as luxury for those who can afford it.

    It hurts most when people are made to pay for goods or services not consumed, such as the epileptic electricity supply. Nonetheless, you can’t give what you don’t have; so the electricity sector in Nigeria can’t give what it doesn’t have, as the electricity generation is very low— less than 5,000 megawatts for over 200milion people and the largest economy in Africa, as par GDP. I say, as par GDP, because assessing the economies of the continent on per-capita basis, South Africa remains far ahead of Nigeria. While Nigeria can claim the crown of Africa’s largest economy, there is a caveat:  South Africa is ahead in terms of infrastructure including electricity supply, as it generates about 42,000megawatts for about 60million people.

    Recently, Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC announced 240% hike in electricity tariffs for band A customers, who are supposed to receive 20 hours of power supply per day. According to Musliu Oseni, the Vice Chairman of NERC, customers in this category will now be charged N225 per kilowatt-hour (KW/h), a significant rise from the previous rate of N66. My question is how many hours are left for the band B, C, D and E consumers from the paltry generation of about 5,000MW? I make bold to say that there is no guarantee of 20hours per day power supply to band A consumers. They should just pay, and know that ‘terms and conditions’ apply. Note: there are times when the country experiences a complete blackout due to a national grid collapse.  The crisis in the electricity sector is huge and we should declare state of emergency in the sector.

    Nigeria’s power generation is mostly thermal and hydro and has an installed capacity of nearly 13,000 megawatts. For many years, authorities only manage to dispatch about 4,500 megawatts of its installed capacity. While the Per Capita power generation ranges from 3kW to 6.6kW in many African countries, the corresponding figure for Nigeria is 0.05. This is literally shameful and unacceptable. The transmission system in Nigeria electricity sector does not cover every part of the country. It currently has the capacity to transmit a maximum of about 4,000 MW which is awfully below the required national needs and it is technically weak thus very sensitive to major disturbances. In most locations in Nigeria, the distribution network is poor, the voltage profile is poor and the billing is inaccurate. A September 2023 report by NERC showed that out of the total 12,825,005 registered electricity customers in Nigeria, only 5,707,838 had meters, indicating that over 7.1 million registered customers were still subjected to the estimated billing system— otherwise known as ‘CRAZY BILLS’ (emphasis mine). In fact, the electricity sector is marketplace where entropy reigns supreme.

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    Adequate power supply is an unavoidable prerequisite to any nation’s development, and electricity generation, transmission and distribution are capital-intensive activities requiring huge resources of both funds and capacity. In the prevailing circumstances in Nigeria where funds availability is progressively dwindling, creative and innovative solutions are necessary to address the power supply problem.

    As part of its contribution to the resolution of the problems of the electricity sector along the line of its mandate, the Energy Commission of Nigeria, ECN has been collaborating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and therefore, applies the IAEA Model for the Analysis of Energy Demand (MAED). ECN on applying the MAED for a 13% GDP growth rate, the demand projections rose from 5,746MW in the base year of 2005 to 297,900MW in the year 2030 which translates to construction of 11,686MW every year to meet the demand. Unfortunately, 2030 is six years away and we are still at about 5,000MW, so let us focus on generating the balance 71,496MW between now and 2030. It can be estimated that the average cost for adding a Mega Watt of electricity is US$1.5million. This demonstrates the resources required in power supply to develop and particularly industrialize any country on a sustainable manner, are large. Based on this index, it therefore can be estimated that Nigeria would have to invest a whopping US$107 billion to generate 71,496MW by 2030. The financial requirement is phenomenal.

    Majority of the population rely on diesel generator leading to environmental pollution and inflation in the prices of goods and services. This poor electricity supply has been a barrier to private investment in the country.

    The needs for affordable, reliable and sustainable energy have led to transformation in the way energy is generated, transmitted and distributed. It has changed from a passive one-directional system to an active, multi-directional system. In this transformation consumers can now produce, manage and own generation assets. Many households now have solar photovoltaic on their rooftops and some are owners of off-site generators such as wind turbines.

    The ever-increasing population and growing demand for electricity in Nigeria has put great pressure on the existing conventional generations and there is urgent need for other alternative energy resources. Localised energy systems which have been prevalent in the UK and Europe remain the most viable solution to tackle the pressing challenges of lack of reliable, environmentally friendly and sustainable electricity supply in Nigeria.

    Currently, the price of renewable energy generation is gradually reducing and thus will help to achieve better energy access. It is obvious that population growth will always be greater than the existing generation and distribution capacity. Therefore, renewable generation and storage remains the most viable option.

    Localised energy system is a medium-sized electricity generation system of capacity not larger than 50MW connected to a local distribution network. Localised generations are connected close to the load which is responsible for losses reduction in the network.

    Local energy systems provide electricity for different categories of customers for domestic and commercial uses. Localised energy system will encourage different groups in the society to come together and invest in energy sectors.