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Tag: Geregu

  • Geregu, Siemens partner to raise Nigerian firm’s overall power generation capacity to 1,200mw

    Geregu, Siemens partner to raise Nigerian firm’s overall power generation capacity to 1,200mw

    Nigeria’s foremost power generation solution provider – Geregu Power Plc has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Siemens Energy to expand generation capacity at the Geregu 1 Power Plant.

    A statement from the firm stated that the partnership is to ensure sustainable, resilient and efficient power generation, while safeguarding assets longevity.

    The synergy is aimed at supporting the growth and sustainability of the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI).

    The signing of the agreement, which took place in Berlin, Germany, on May 29, entailed discussions and proposed implementation of various solutions ranging from the upgrade of the Geregu 1 Power Plant from its current capacity of 435mw to 500mw.

    Incorporated in 2006, the Geregu Power Plc began its operations in 2007 with a mission to generate and supply electric through Nigeria’s national grid.

    The company operates a power plant with a 435mw installed-capacity.

    In 2013, Geregu Power was acquired by Amperion Power Distribution Company Limited (APDCL), a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) made up of Calvados Global Services Limited and State Grid Shanghai Municipal Electric Power Company, the biggest power utility company in the world under the privatisation programme of the Dr. Goodluck Jonathan administration.

    A year after, the APDCL carried out the first major overhaul of its facilities at $94 million.

    The overhaul raised the plant’s capacity availability and utilisation from 25 per cent to 100 per cent and also increased its nameplate capacity from 414mw to 435mw.

    Also, in 2019, APDCL increased its ownership stake in Geregu from 51 per cent to 80 per cent, reinforcing its commitment to the company and in 2021, APDCL further increased its holding to 100 per cent, taking full control and ownership of Geregu Power Plc.

    Two years ago, Geregu Power issued a N40 billion bond as part of its N100 billion bond programme, strengthening its financial base. Later in the year, the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), the impact investment subsidiary of the African Export-Import Bank, made a strategic investment by acquiring a five per cent stake in the company.

    Geregu Power said the May 29 pact will lead to the establishment of a combined cycle operations to generate an additional 200mw, using lower emission turbines with an added capacity of 500mw to establish  Geregu 3, bringing Geregu Power Plc’s overall nameplate capacity to 1,200mw.

    These initiatives, it stressed, are targeted at higher power output, improved efficiency, lower emissions, higher flexibility,  longer equipment lifespan and maximising shareholder value thorough increased earnings.

    Chairman, Board of Directors of Geregu Power Plc, Mr. Femi Otedola, led the Geregu Power Plc team to sign the MoU with the Siemens Energy team led by its Managing Director in Middle East and Africa, Mr. Dietmar Siersdorfer.

     Geregu Power is also listed on the Nigerian Exchange, becoming the first power generating company to be listed on the main board of the Nigerian Bourse.

    Read Also: JUST IN: Power generation drops to 305MW

    Last year, the company was awarded with its ISO certification (ISO 9001 and ISO 14001) following the demonstrating of its commitment to operate with the highest quality standards.

    Besides, as part of its strategic initiatives, Geregu Power Plc is partnering with the Lagos State Government to deliver the state’s first private electricity transmission network.

    The company said it continues to consolidate its investments in the power sector by pursuing mergers and acquisitions alongside strategic partnerships to expand its market share and boost operational efficiency.

    The power plant consists of three simple cycle natural gas-fired Siemens V94.2 STG5-2000E gas turbine generator units, with a total installed capacity of 435mw.

    The turbine units, designated GT11, GT12, and GT13, are each designed to produce 145mw at 15.75 kV, which is then stepped up to 330 kV via a 173.6 MVA power transformer. The plant now generates, on average 10 per cent of Nigeria’s total power consumption.

    Geregu Power Plc restated commitment to its role as a key player in the energy sector, striving to power the nation’s growth and improve the quality of life.

  • Bello lauds FG over Geregu power plant

    Bello lauds FG over Geregu power plant

    Gov. Yahaya Bello of Kogi has commended the Federal Government and other stakeholders for the completion of three turbines power generation at Geregu Power Plant in the state.

    Bello gave the commendation at the 22nd Power Sector Monthly Meeting with power stakeholders and other participants held at Geregu Power Plc, Ajaokuta on Monday.

    The governor expressed his appreciation to the Minister of  Power, Works and Housing, the President and the Vice President for the good job they had been doing in the power sector.

    “Today, we are glad that there is a relative improvement in the power generation and transmission across Nigeria, especially in Kogi.

    “The Federal Government has virtually solved all the power problems but we need a little patience to identify the communities which do not have electricity in Kogi to install the required transformers.

    “I want to encourage investors to make enough investment in power distribution so that various communities at the grassroots in Kogi and Nigeria at large can begin to enjoy the benefits.

    “When we assumed office, we met a dispute regarding Kabba Power Transmission substation, but we immediately waded in and resolved the issues for the work to be completed.”

    The governor said that the state government had made efforts to reduce cases of reported and unreported kidnapping and armed robbery cases in the state.

    “Without adequate security, the power plant here will not be safe and we will not be talking about generation, transmission or distribution.

    “We have been supporting and equipping our security agencies to ensure that the contractors and their workers working on the roads are safe and secure,” he said.

    The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola said that the power production had reached an all-time high of over 7,000 megawatts in the nation.

    According to him, the ministry in collaboration with all the stakeholders has created a safe and more conducive environment to gain the confidence of investors in the power sector.

    “On December 8, we reached an all-time power production of 7,000 and a great peak supply of 5,155 Megawatts, which Nigeria has never produced or generated that much power into the grid.

    Read also: We are expecting additional 1,129 MW in 2018 – Fashola

    “The last supply was 5074 MW in January 2016, after which we went into a season of disruption of gas supply by militants.

    “It means that our policies and programmes are working, and we are also now able to evacuate substantially all of that power by transmission,” he said.

    Fashola expressed his gratitude to the government for paying the compensation that was militating against the development of the Kabba Transmission Sub-station.

    Mr Adeyemi Adenuga, the Managing Director, Generation, Geregu Power Plant, said that the plant was handed over to private company on Oct. 1, 2013.

    Adenuga said that the new owners had invested about 94 million dollars into the plant to bring it the present state.

    “Right now, we can successfully run three units (turbines) comfortably, effectively and efficiently. So, we hope that from this meeting, we will get the needed loads for our machine,” Adenuga said.

    Mr Otayitie Eminefo, the Special Adviser on Energy and Power to the governor, applauded the minister and stakeholders for their visit to the state.

    He appealed to stakeholders to give priority to electrification projects in the state.

    NAN

  • Life in Geregu community

    Life in Geregu community

    Drama is all about make-belief. This explains the moving performance of Theatre Arts students of the Kogi State University (KSU) Anyigba, who depicted, life in Geregu, a community in Ajaokuta Local Government Area. MOHAMMED YABAGI (300-Level Mass Communication) reports.

    DRAMA is life. This aphorism was brought home when Theatre Arts students of the Kogi State University (KSU) in Anyingba, staged a Drama, depicting life in Geregu, a sprawling community in Ajaokuta Local Government Area. It was a satirical play with a punchy delivery. Satire is a literature tool used to criticise behaviour, vices, follies and shortcomings using humour.

    During the four-hour event, the mood of the audience members rose and fell with the play’s tempo.

    The characters were participating in the town and gown project of the department, tagged: Community Theatre for Development (CTD), which uses theatre as a tool to expose societal ills and to make people conscious of their cultures.

    The students were led to Geregu by their teachers, including the Head of Department, Dr Williams Onogu, and course tutors Prof James Ator-Alachi and Mr Jonathan Okpanachi. They gathered the residents on an open field for the event.

    The drama started with pupils of LGEA Primary School staging a cultural dance, which drew intermittent applause from the crowd. The pupils danced to the tune played by Gbadankolo – a group of elders in the community.

    The students came on stage, rendering folksongs. The delivery excited the locals, who sang along with them.

    Dramatising the lack of lavatory facilities in most houses in Geregu, the students sent message on the importance of sanitation.

    The community, according to the drama, is not environmentally friendly, resulting in diseases, such as diarrhoea.

    The play also touched on congestion and high cost of rent in the community. An episode illustrated how people purify well water with alum to make it safe for drinking, because the community lacks pipe-borne water. The students, through the play, taught the residents alternative way of purifying the water.

    Poverty is not strange in Geregu as it is in many communities. This was also captured in the drama, which depicted how families could not afford basic necessities of life.

    The drama demonstrated how Geregu’s proximity to Itobe, an Igala town, threatened commerce in the community market, and why collapse of Ajaokuta Steel Company also affected trading. The illustration was captured in a song:  “Aja steel don go, market don go” (Ajaokuta Steel Company has become moribund, so also has Geregu market).

    Other societal phenomena captured in the drama included illiteracy, child trafficking, street hawking, teenage pregnancy, gambling, smoking and excessive drinking of alcohol.

    Prof Ator-Alachi hailed the students for the “brilliant performance”. The drama, he said, took the students two weeks of rehearsal. He described theatre as the best medium to tell emotive stories about people and societies.

    He said: “The students were taught different skills on developing scenario into drama; the skill of facilitating, watching and talking about societal challenges through a play. As was seen in the drama, the characters were interested in exposing the ills in the community and the failure of leadership. In doing that, they tried to inject life into the drama and the people were surprised to know what has been going on in their community.

    “We hope to use this project to assist the people to prioritise their problems and find a way of solving them. We need to ensure that they are assisted in channelling their grievances to the right quarters, whether it is government or an individual that would help attend to these problems.”

    Dr Onogu said the project sought to use drama as tool for development. “We want to show that it is not every problem in the society that is caused by government; people also have their own faults. This is the kind of theatre arts that seeks to merge the town and gown. It is taught in all universities that offer theatre arts as a course,” he said.

    On how the department came about the story, Onogu said: “We go to communities to conduct research into their lives. We try to know the challenges they face and use it to write our script. On the case of Geregu, we carried out extensive research on the community and sat down to analyse the information and data we got. It is from the data that we write our scripts. What we do first is to create a scenario from the sketch and then develop it.”

    The community head, Alhaji Habib Idris Geregu, said the drama struck an emotional chord in people’s hearts. He said: “The drama illustrated all aspects of our problems in this community. They have shown us our faults and what we are not doing well as members of the community. Parents learnt what our youths and children indulge in behind our back. We have learnt from this and we will sensitise our people to change their ways. We also urge the government to initiate development projects in the community.”

     

     

  • Hope rises as Geregu boosts power supply

    Hope rises as Geregu boosts power supply

    The inauguration of the Phase II-434 megawatts Geregu appears to have raised the hope of improved electricity supply, reports JOHN OFIKHENUA.

    With the inauguration of the 434 megawatts (mw) of electricity from the Phase II of the Geregu Power Plant, there is hope for improved power supply soon. Also, the Federal Government has said it would make good its promise to change the electricity equation on the national grid.

    The plant was inaugaurated last week by President Goodluck Jonathan in Geregu, Ajaokuta Local Government Area, Kogi State. Stressing that Nigeria must tackle its electricity challenges if it wants to become an industrialised nation, he said the remaining nine plants would be inaugurated next June.

    “If Nigeria must be industrialised, we must fix power,” he said.

    He said the plant is one of those under the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPPs) that are jointly owned by the three tiers of government. He said others would be handed over to private investors next year.

    The decision to implement the NIPPs that would upon completion add 5,000mw to national generation capacity, according to him, is an indication of government’s efforts at providing regular electricity supply to its citizenry.

    He advised the three tiers of government to own shares in the NIPPs, given the resolution of a suit instituted against it by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission.

    Expressing optimism on how the project could turn around the electricity sector and have a multiplier effect on the country’s economy , Jonathan said: “I am confident that in the very near future, the present epileptic power situation which is a stumbling block to the rapid growth of our economy will give way to reasonable improvement in terms of electricity delivery and other services.”

    He said at the conception of the project, the government seemed to have ignored gas supply plan for it but the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has now put an emergency gas supply plan in place to remedy the situation.

    As a major factor in power generation, gas supply affects virtually all the decisions on power. For instance, gas pricing is a determinant for reviewing the electricity tariff. Consequent upon this, the Federal Government has entered into a gas purchase agreement with the vendors to ensure steady supply to thermal plants. Aside having a reserve of 187trillion metric cubic feet of gas, Nigeria has made provision for the domestic market 1.500 million cubic feet per day.

    But power sector analysts have raised issues on the ineffieciencies in the gas supply chain, which they fear may cripple the operations of the power plants. But on the Geregu 11 Plant, the Managing Director, Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), Mr James Olotu, said apart from the abundant natural gas, gas turbine power plants are easily constructed and best suited for the emergency intervention in power generation as conceived by the government.

    He said gas for the power station will come from Oben-Ajaokuta gas pipeline. He noted that the Nigerian Gas Company (NGC’s) facility built for Phase 1 has gas pressure reduction and metering station (GPRMS) capable of supplying additional gas requirements to Phase 11 plant. He said some modifications for separate metering trains for the gas sale lines for the two connected power plants were being done at the GPRMS by Messrs Zakhem Ltd.

    He said: ”The Geregu Phase 11 power station project was initiated in 2006 as the second phase development to the existing 414 mw Geregu Phase 1 power station to add three more Siemen type V94.2 gas turbines to complete the Geregu power station as originally conceived. However, as the project was to be funded under the NIPP with a different ownership structure from first phase plant, the Phase 11 power plant therefore was built as a fully independent stand-alone plant.”

    Olotu said Jonathan would inaugurate the Omotosho Power Plant later this month.

    He said the generation component of NIPP was conceived as a complete gas-to-power package that would harness the natural gas reserves in the Niger Delta to produce the much-needed electricity for economic growth.

    On NIPPs, Minister of Power Prof Chinedu Nebo said the country was already harnessing 1,600 mw to the national grid regularly.

    He said more units of the generation companies which the Federal Government has privatised were being overhauled “with a view to achieving a robust generation profile for the country. It is very clear that better days are ahead.”

    The minister noted that NIPPs has altered the electricity equation of the grid system.

    He said:“Today, NIPPs has, indeed, changed the power equation of the grid system.”

  • Jonathan commissions Geregu plant

    Jonathan commissions Geregu plant

    •Minister: NIPPs to contribute 1,600mw to national grid

    President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday commissioned the 434 mega watts (mw) in Gereju Kogi State.

    He declared that the power sector must be fixed for the nation to become fully industrialised.

    The president said: “If Nigeria must be industrialised, we must fix power.”

    He recalled presenting the certificates to core owners of the Power Holding Company (PHCN) Limited last Monday, assuring that power supply will soon become stable across the nation.

    Jonathan confirmed that the implementation of the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) was stalled following a legal suit against the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC).

    He advised that the three tiers of government should own shares in the projects.

    Jonathan said, upon commissioning, the 10 green field power projects, which will be privatised next year, will generate additional 5,000mw to the national grid.

    Kogi State governor, Idris Wada, appealed to the president to approve the state’s request to become a free enterprise zone.

    The governor also pleaded with Jonathan to resuscitate the Ajaokuta Steel Company, noting that with the proximity of the two entities, the steel plant should benefit from the power plant.

    The Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, said that NIPP’s contribution to the national grid on regular basis will be 1,600 mw.

    While stressing that the Geregu 2 station will change the electricity equation in Nigeria, he noted that with the phase 1 and 2, Geregu has become “power metropolis.”

    The Managing Director, Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHDC), Mr. James Olotu, stated that Abuja and other parts of the Federal Capital Territory will be enjoying the benefits of the project by the end of October.

    Olotu noted that the generation component of NIPP was conceived as a complete gas-to-power package that will harness the underutilised natural gas reserves in the Niger Delta region to produce the much needed electricity for the nation’s economic growth.

    He said that apart from the abundance of natural gas as fuel, gas turbine power plants have the shorter construction periods and best suited for the emergency intervention in power generation capacity improvement as conceived by the government.