The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI)

  • FG seeks power sector exit from dependence on forex

    Minister of Power, Works and Housing Raji Fashola on Thursday sought the exit of the power sector from its dependence on other countries for human and material resources.

    He lamented the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) is highly dependent on imported human and material resources, making it vulnerable to foreign exchange availability and rates.

    He spoke in Abuja during the opening ceremony of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (NERC) two-day workshop on minimum specification of Nigerian Content and requirements for labour in the power sector and an exhibition of local products /services for the NESI.

    The ministry’s Director of Procurement, Engr. Ahmed Abu, who represented him, said: “The NESI is heavily dependent on imported human resources, material, equipment and services.

    “It is consequently vulnerable to foreign exchange availability and rates, to the extent that contracts for gas and generation are dominated in foreign currency.

    “It is time to systematically develop Nigerian capacity and content in the industry for its long term growth and stability.”

    The minister said that the objective was to intentionally use local human and material resources, goods and services in the industry.

    He said that the President, pursuant to the authority vested on him by the Constitution, ordered that ‘all procuring authorities shall give preference to Nigerian companies and firms in the award of contracts, in line with the Public Procurement Act 2007.’

    He revealed the order also prohibits the Ministry of Interior from giving Visas to foreign workers whose skills are steadily available in Nigeria.

    The minister stressed the order however notes that where expertise is lacking , procuring entities will give preference to foreign companies and firms with a demonstrable and verifiable plan for indigenous development, prior to the award of such contracts.

  • Power supply dips to 2006mw

    …as transmission line trips North East to blackout

     

    The power supply from the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) at the weekend dropped to 83,570.30mwh (2006mw), according to the Independent System Operator (ISO) of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

    Its operational report of Sunday showed that the industry recorded a peak generation of 4,452mw and lowest generation of 3,041mw on the previous day.

    The report also noted that “energy recorded on 22/09/2018 was 83,570.30MWH.” It however added that the generation at 06:00hour on Sunday was 3,340mw.

    The TCN however explained in a press statement that due to the tripping on fault of the Jos-Gombe 330kV Transmission Line, which had just undergone Annual Scheduled Maintenance, the North Eastern States including Bauchi, Gombe, Adamawa Borno, Yobe and Taraba are currently out of power supply.

    Its General Manager Public Affairs, Mrs. Ndidi Mbah, who issued the statement, noted that the line tripping occurred on 19:09 hour Saturday after it was re-energized.

    All efforts are being made by the company’s line engineering crew to resolve the problem and restore the transmission line accordingly.

    The statement added that the company took advantage of the outage to undertake the Annual Scheduled Maintenance of the 330kV transmission line from Jos to Gombe.

    Read Also: Power supply dips to 2006mw

    After the maintenance work has been completed by the combined engineering maintenance crew from Gombe and Jos Transmission Substations, the transmission line was re closed and energized at about 15:09 hours Saturday at 19:09 hours however, the line tripped due to fault on the line. TCN quickly initiated the patrol of the transmission line to detect and rectify the fault.

    The release noted that as at 18:30 pm, on Sunday the line engineering crew patrolling the Jos part of the 330kV transmission line has completed investigations on that part of the line, while the Gombe part of the transmission line trace is still ongoing. The entire line cannot be energized until both ends of the line trace have been concluded. Once completed, the findings would be analyzed and faults cleared, TCN will then re-energized the transmission line.

    Mbah said that the “TCN sincerely regrets inconveniences caused by the outage and also apologizes to the Government and people of the six North Eastern states affected by the outage, while assuring that efforts are ongoing to ensure a speedy completion of the transmission line trace and faults clearance in other to re close and energize the 330kV transmission line. Please bear with us.”

  • 22 firms receive NERC no objection for meter procurement 

    The Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) Wednesday said that it has granted “No Objection” to 22 companies to participate in it is Meter Procurement Process.

    The General Manager, Public Affairs , Dr. Usman Abba Arabi recalled in a statement that following the Commission’s approval of the Meter Asset Provider (MAP) Regulations 2018, applications were invited from interested investors for ‘No Objection’ from the Commission.

    MAP Regulations, according to the statement, is intended to facilitate closure of the wide metering gap in the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) within three years. The ‘No Objection’ is to qualify intending investors to participate in the meter procurement process in NESI.

    The statement reads in parts: “The Regulation mandates electricity distribution companies (DISCOS) to engage meter assets providers who fund purchase, installation and replacement of meters to meet Discos metering obligations to their customers. This is to ensure that all electricity customers are metered thereby reducing incidences of estimated electricity billing to the barest minimum.

    Read Also: NERC to increase electricity tariff

    “The Commission having conducted due diligence on the supporting documents to the applications submitted by interested investors, has granted successful applicants ‘No Objection’ to participate in the procurement process for meter assets provision in accordance with section 8 subsection 4 of the Meter Assets Providers Regulations, 2018.

    “Members of the public and intending investors should please note that the publication of these applicants does not foreclose other interested applicants from getting the ‘No Objection’ as it is a continuous exercise.

    Companies granted ‘No Objection’ include Huawei Technology Company Nigeria Limited; Bilview Energy Limited; Chintech Electro Nigeria Limited; Holley Metering Limited; Meron Nigeria Limited; Integrated Power Limited; MBH Power Limited; Trimani Engineering Limited; Sapropel Energy Resources Limited; Megawatt Distribution International Limited; Unistar Hi-Tech Systems Limited; and MOMAS Electricity Meters Manufacturing Company Limited.

    “Others are Imperial Infrastructure Development Company Limited; Ratio Consulting Limited; Protogy Global Services Limited; Paktim Metering Nigeria Limited; Sabrud Consortium Nigeria Limited; Tinuten Nigeria Limited; Kayz Consortium Limited; BTS Power Limited; CIG Metering Assets Nigeria Limited and Cresthill Energy Limited.”

     

  • New NERC chairman vows to review tariff

    …FG to evacuate stranded 2000mw this year

     

    The tariff issue that has held the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) down since 2015 would soon be resolved as the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) chairman, Prof. James Momoh Thursday vowed to review it.

    Speaking with reporters after the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola inaugurated him in Abuja, he said the commission has no choice other than looking into the computation of the tariff.

    As the reporters put it to him that the tariff has remained a major issue in the electricity market asking what would he do about it, he swiftly said that “the tariff is not a challenge you cannot solve. It happened; you learnt something about it last week. You don’t have to relearn the same lesson today.

    “You should be able to ask question what are we going to do tomorrow to avoid the problem. There is what you call Data Science in the new thinking of the world, where we collect data, you learn from the information and you predict the future. So if we don’t do that we are wasting our time. Because you know it is going to rain tomorrow so you get your umbrella. You don’t wait until it rains before you go by umbrella.

    Asked whether his response suggests if there is going to be some progress in the clearance of the tariff issue that has lingered over the years, the new NERC boss said that “We have no choice we have to look at what computes a tariff. Tariff is not a guesswork. There is a calculation you do to get there.”

    Momoh promised to bring the experience that he has garnered over the years to bear in the commission, stressing that he believes in team work and addressing quick wins.

    He pointed out that some of the quick wins should be what the commission could do in terms of estimated metering and how to ensure that it gets enough data to convince customers to pay for the power they use.

    He also pledged to bring the best practices to the industry in the bid to ensure that NESI is a quality and reliable power supplier.

    There is also the need to ensure that there is innovation in the industry, he said, stressing that “if we remain the same, and we remain static, and we are not solving real problem, we will just be doing fire brigade promise. The GenCos will always tell you there is a blackout without knowing why.

    “You are going to ask question why. I know why, because I know the Mathematics behind it, I know the Physics behind it. I know also the Economics behind it. If we are able to teach people to know why things go wrong, perhaps, we learn from our mistakes.”

    Momoh, who said the industry should anticipate problems, insisted that “we look back, we use lessons of yesterday to solve tomorrow’s problem.”

    Earlier Fashola said that observers would admit that power supply has increased since 2015, submitting that “without a doubt, we have increased generation to 7000mw, increasing the transmission to over 7,000mw, and increasing the distribution from 2,690 to average of 4,900 or 5,000.”

    He announced that the electricity market has a capacity of 2,000mw that has been stranded, which the ministry is working to distribute before this year is over.

    According to him, the NESI has a new stock of 459MW underway from Azura that has notified him on the completion of its plant and its readiness to commence operation.

    Momoh said that the sector is expecting another 240Mw from Afam and another 215MW from Kaduna. Besides, he noted that the market is also expecting power from Kashimbilla, “but the distribution end is where our challenge lies.”

    The minister revealed that the mini grid regulation has started yielding results, and the ministry is already seeing the impacts in the market.

    He said that this year, markets like Suru in Lagos, Sabon Gari market in in Kano, Ariria market in Aba, and some other markets are going to be energized.

    Fashola noted that since the completion of the privatization of the sector, the size of the ministry has shrunk from the previous staff strength of the 50,000 to less than 1,000.

  • Discos to FG save us from forex black marketers 

    …Blames power outage on transmission constraints

     

    The association of Nigerian electricity distributors (ANED) Director of Research and Advocacy, Bar. Sunday Oduntan Wednesday called on the Federal Government to save the DisCos from the hands of black marketers of foreign exchange (forex).

    He urged the government to direct the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to give priority to the power sector operators in order to save them from purchasing dollars from the black market.

    His words: “we have been calling on the Federal Government to get the CBN to give us priority, so that we don’t have to go to the black market to buy dollar. So the one that is going on now, is beneficial to us. If dollar improves against the dollar it will benefit the DISCO’s”

    Citing an example with metering, Oduntan said that “we have about 2.9m customers yet to be metered ,and if you look at the amount of money required to do that even at the minimum of N53,000 per meter , it can be more than that now because of forex issue. If forex goes down it can still go below that 53,000 that means we need billions of naira to take care of that”.

    According to him, the government needs to do more to fix the power sector as that is the only way to fix the economic situation of the country.

    Oduntan blamed the constant power outage on transmission bottleneck, noting that areas like Apo, Central Area, Katampe and Gwagwalada are experiencing power outage, owing to defective facilities of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

    Oduntan, however said that instead of simply blaming the situation on the TCN, he would rather urge the Federal Government to strengthen it for efficiency through sufficient investment.

    According to him, the Federal Government needs to urgently and critically support the entire value chain, in order to make the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) profitable or commercially viable.

    He said “N701 billion intervention fund is a good start but without a holistic resolution and details of how the intervention will work, we will not make progress, that is our reaction to that intervention. There must be a holistic resolution for the whole value chain from the upstream to downstream.so that for me in the downstream side of the sector, if I am buying a product at the rate of N68 and I am only allowed to sell it for N31.50,there is no way it can be commercially viable”. He added that the support needs to go down not just the GENCOs.

    He appealed to the general public to pay their bills, adding that electricity theft has remained one of the factors weighing down the efforts of the DISCos adding that the association appeals to the National Assembly to consider passing an anti-electricity theft bill, and create mobile courts to formally prosecute energy thieves.

    He called on the key players in the energy sector, to adopt “SCADA” a technology which according to him, can help monitor the activities of power facilities nationwide.

     

  • Gas to power constraint reduces to 2,824MW

    ….TCN wheels out 3,473MW to DisCos

     

    The Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) Friday said that gas supply to power generation companies (GenCos) that resulted in a shortage of 2,941 Mega Watts (MW) on Monday reduced to 2,824MW on Wednesday.

    Following the militants’ attacks on the gas pipelines in the Niger Delta, lack of gas caused a shortage of about 4,000MW in the last few months and 3,000 MW a fortnight ago.

    But in its report on power performance, NESI noted that on the day under review, the sector recorded 472.6MW line management constraint, 40MW high frequency constraint and 0MW water management constraint, which all resulted in estimated loss of an equivalent of N1.6b.

    According to NESI: “On September 21 2016, average power sent out was 3447MWh/hour (down by 286MWh/h) the reported gas constraint was 2824MW.The reported line constraint was 472.6MW and the reported high frequency constraint is 40 MW according to TCN. The water management constraint was 0MW.The power sector lost an estimated N1, 602, 000, 000 on September 21 2016 due to constraints.”

    In its Operational Performance report of September 23, the Nigeria Electricity System Operator (SO) noted that at 06:00 of the day under review was 3,992.30MW.

    It added that peak generation for the previous day was 4,178MW, lowest generation 3,348MW and energy sent out to the distribution companies (Discos) was 3,596.6MW.