By Abdul Lawal, Abuja
With less than seven months to the end of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Administration, the Federal Government has given an indication of its plan to unbuddle the Transmission Company of Nigeria( TCN) along functional lines.
This was revealed on monday by the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo during his presentation at the ongoing ministerial retreat holding in Abuja. His speech centered on the efforts and achievements of the Buhari’s administration in the power sector.
Prof. Osinbajo who is the Chairman of Board of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company Limited (NDPHC) and Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) was speaking on power sector developments at the the Ministerial Performance Review retreat at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
According to him, the unbundling of TCN will give rise to three entities with distinct responsibilities.
The Vice President explained that under the proposed unbundling entities, TCN will be operate as transmission service provider in terms of infrastructure to wheel power throughout Nigeria. He said there will be an Independent System Operator that will be providing management services of power dispatch and grid security while the third entities will be the Market Operation function, that will essentially act as market settlement administration entity.
Prof. Osinbajo said, “Going forward in the electricity industry (and there is so much that is going on there), it is proposed that the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN be separated into two entities under the direct oversight of the Ministry of Power: and the two constituents parts would be TCN to serve as a transmission service provider responsible for providing infrastructure for transporting electric energy across the whole of Nigeria and then the Independent System Operator to provide systems operations which is mainly about the management of power dispatch and grid security. And then the market operation function, which is market settlement administration.
“This arrangement will create independence between TCN as a regulator and participant and certainly improve the confidence of market participants.”
He described the power sector as that of process of building a skyscraper saying, “The Power Sector is an area where there has been game-changing progress but the situation is rather like building a skyscraper, the foundation is several floors into the ground, and no one sees the work while this critical component of the building is being done.
“This is where we are in the power sector, a lot of foundational work is going on.
“First is the improvement in generating capacity today. More than 4,000MW of additional power-generating assets will be completed under the life of this administration. These include the Zungeru Hydro, Kashimbilla Hydro, Afam III Fast Power, Kudenda- Kaduna Power Plant, the Okpai Phase 2 Gas Power Plant, the Dangote Refinery Power Plant and many others.
“Recently, KPMG concluded a study showing that while the figure of 4,000MW is the average used daily on the grid, electricity delivered by the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry, NESI on the whole which includes Grid, Captive and Embedded Power is in excess of 8,000MW daily not 4,000MW and also that installed capacity is in excess of 18,000MW, not 13,000MW.
“Much of the improvement to 8,000MW has occurred under our administration and they include one, the 28 Grid Power plants with an installed capacity of 13,000MW and operational daily capacities of around 5,000MW. These include Power Plants in Egbin, Ughelli, Geregu, Kainji and others.
“There are 266 Captive Power plants (mainly industrial over 1MW) with Installed capacities of 4,000MW and Daily Operational Capacities of around 2,500MW. These include the Dangote Cement Capacities in Obajana Ibese (400MW), and NLNG’s Bonny Island Power Plant (240MW) amongst others. These are never captured in the statistics but are part of the stock of NESI. In the future, many of these plants will integrate into the grid, in fact, some of them supply power to communities where they are already.
“Then there are the 16 Embedded Power Plants with 549MW of Installed Capacities and 190MW of Daily Operational Capacity. There is a whole range of generating capacity, most of them are not on the grid, they are captive or embedded depending on which ones they are. All of them contribute to our generating capacity on a regular basis.
“Our renewable energy programme has also attained great momentum. The Solar Naija Programme launched under the Economic Sustainability Plan is designed to achieve 5 million solar connections impacting over 25 million Nigerians. the Ministry of Power is also driving an additional N49billion in off-grid funding through the #SolarPowerNaija via the CBN. There are also ongoing projects under the #SolarPowerNaija with NDPHC doing N7billion in solar projects, NNPC doing N22billion, NSIA doing N10billion and Infracredit/BOI doing N10billion in solar projects.
“An important component of our power programme is the National Mass Metering Programme. This programme has helped greatly in advancing the fortunes of our electricity fortunes. It is being financed by CBN has created 10,000 jobs and distributed 1 million meters and is establishing a structure to meter an additional 6 million households and sustainably eliminate the metering gap. One of the major complaints of our discos and the electricity industry is that there isn’t adequate metering. Most times, discos have to give estimated billings and this is a tremendous irritation to consumers.