By ABAH ADAH, Abuja
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has said it is targeting 14,000 megawatts (mw) of electricity capacity under the Transmission Expansion and Rehabilitation Programme (TERP) being financed with about N383bn ($1.064 million) from international donors.
The interim Managing Director of the company,Mr Usman Gur Mohammed who disclosed this to journalists in Abuja recently on the achievements of the firm so far said, “In the last 10 months, we have added 1,000mw capacity to raise the wheeling capacity to 7,000mw and that is much more higher than the 4,500mw capacity the Distribution Companies (DisCos) can take.”
The TCN boss who was appointed as head of the all important mid-utility in the power supply chain since January 2017 noted that he was purging the federal government agency of old habits to have an agency that practises global standards in expanding the electricity grid.
He said, “We are working to raise the transmission capacity higher than the 7,000mw because according to the Power Pyramid structure which is the global best practice, when the Generation Companies (GenCos) attain 7,000mw as they are now, the transmission capacity should be twice of that at 14,000mw and the DisCos’ network capacity should be twice of transmission which is 28,000mw. But this is not the case now in Nigeria.”
He said the local funding through the electricity market revenue is poor at below 40 per cent which does not support the huge investment plan. “The shortfall is because of the DisCos’ poor revenue collection.
“We have sought for external funding for the Transmission Expansion and Rehabilitation Programme which has been approved by the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing and the Federal Ministry of Finance along with some multilateral donors,” he explained.
Mr Mohammed said he is taking steps to ensure that some past mistakes in projects implementation are not repeated. He noted that some local contractors do not have the capacity to execute projects and that TCN has this year alone spent over N2.5bn clearing containers at the ports because those contractors could not do it.
“Now we have decided that to pick contractors, we will need the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) that has been selected to bring in the equipment and have them installed themselves and not through the joint ventures or subletting of contracts that used to be the order in TCN,” Mohammed said.
Mohammed who by virtue of his past experiences equally acknowledged the delay in the procurement process of internationally financed projects said the donors have agreed to do ‘Advanced Procurement’ to avert any delay of projects.
The post TCN Targets 14, 000MWs Of Electricity Through TERP appeared first on leadership.ng.
TCN Targets 14, 000MWs Of Electricity Through TERP
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