From Clement Adeyi, Osogbo
The Buhari administration has assured of improved and sustained power supply in the country to boost the Nigerian economy.
Minister of Power Engineer Sale Mamman gave the assurance during his familiarisation tour of the National Control Centre (NCC) of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) in Osogbo, the Osun State capital.
Mamman said that to guarantee improved power stability, the government would connect about 330,132 substations that are currently not connected which had remained the only challenge facing the NCC due to the lack of SCADA/EMS facility.
‘I have seen things myself. The only problem confronting the National Control Centre is lack of SCADA/EMS facility because most of our substations 330,132 are not connected. By the time they are connected, we will together have less problem of understanding what is happening in the distribution company and the generation substations,’ he noted.
‘I am here to see things myself, meet with staff and listen to their challenges so as to take action on them immediately,’ the minister stated.
He expressed delight that since he assumed duties, power supply had improved tremendously.
He stated that the Buhari administration had generated the highest power in the history of Nigeria to the tune of over 115,065.78 MW.
He added that the country had also attained over 5,520.40 MW at 21.15 hours.
The minister maintained that in the history of Nigeria 2020 was the year the nation’s power system had experienced the least system collapse which, he said, would soon undergo stability.
Earlier, in his welcome address the Acting General Manager of the National Control Centre (NCC), Osogbo, Engineer Abdullahi Balaraba, lauded the minister for his visitation.
Balaraba noted that the visit would gear up the Federal Government’s transformational initiatives of power sector aimed at consolidating the gains recorded so far.
Balarabe highlighted inadequate generation, false declaration of generation availability, load frequency control and inadequacy of gas supply as NCC challenges.
‘We sustained the grid operations for five months and 29 days without grid system collapse. This is first of its kind in the history of the power sector,’ he noted.
‘We only had four total and zero system collapse from January 2020 to date. This is first of its kind in the history of the power sector.
‘Grid generation installed capacity has increased to 13,014.40MW due to synchronization of Dadin-kowa Hydro power plant. This has led to an improvement in the voltage within the axis,’ he said.