The Senate Committee on Power, on Monday April 23,2024 paid an oversight visit to the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN.
Welcoming the lawmakers, the Managing Director/CEO of TCN, Engr. Sule Abdulaziz expressed confidence that the visit will provide great opportunity for the senators to understand what the company is doing to improve power supply in the country.
On the efforts of TCN, Abdulaziz stated that because of the increasing electricity demand, his administration is focusing on reconductoring lines, grid expansion through rehabilitation and reinforcements of infrastructure across the country.
He maintained that TCN is currently undertaking over one hundred projects geared towards expanding the grid and enhancing network visibility.
The TCN Boss who lamented that some of the projects are being delayed due to issues of Right of Way (ROW), however, appealed to the senators to consider enacting laws to protect TCN from interference and encroachment into its ROW.
While highlighting vandalism and inadequate funding as some of the key challenges the company is battling with, he "appealed to the committee to help us boost our budget as well as source funds for us to complete some of the projects that are stalling due to fund constraints".
Corroborating the MD's position, the Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu said that "TCN's wheeling capacity can be enhanced if the state of its ageing infrastructure is addressed. Currently, the company is working to complete more than 120 projects which were abandoned across the country due to Right of Way problems and funding constraints".
Earlier, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Power, Sen. Enyinnaya Abaribe disclosed that the committee embarked on the visit to seek clarification and understanding of the state of transmission as a key component in the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI).
Abaribe, who said that the number of senators who turned up for the visit confirms their commitment to ensuring a stable and reliable power supply in the country, assured that the challenges identified from the meeting that require legal framework to be tackled will be addressed.
According to him, "we are here to hear from you directly, the challenges in the sector as it affects transmission. We're aware that both the generation and distribution segments of the sector had been privatised but for national security reasons, transmission was left in the hands of government. We understand that the TCN has a wheeling capacity of about 8000mw but transmission has fluctuated between 3000mw to 5000mw even when generation capacity is about 1300mw. So, we want to know why, to see how we can come in as lawmakers to address them".
On her part, the Executive Director, Independent System Operation (ISO), Engr. Nafisatu Ali who spoke on the causes of system collapse said that due to different participants in the grid, several factors can led to total or partial grid collapse.
She noted that "lack of gas supply, refusal of the generators to put their machines on Free Governor's Mode to monitor grid activities, low power generation, vandalization of major transmission lines, major load loss, system overload due to DisCos' load rejection leading to imbalance on the grid", are some of the things that can lead to system disturbance/collapse.
Continuing, Ali explained that while TCN continues to work on the full implementation of the SCACA system to monitor the grid, it is currently relying on Internet of Things (IoT), developed by in-house engineers to "view all power generators but not on unit basis. Hence the need for the SCADA for grid controllers to view the activities of all participants at once".
Post a Comment