How Regional Grid System Would Avert Nationwide Power Failure, By Nnaji

As Nigeria continues to witness intermittent power failure due to the collapse of the national grid, former minister of power Prof. Bart Nnaji has said the establishment of a regional grid system will help to prevent nationwide collapse when a particular area is affected.

Prof. Nnaji who is the CEO of Geometric Power, an indigenous energy solution provider, said such a power arrangement would require setting up area control centres that are semi-autonomous but still connected to the national grid so that when there is a problem with the power facility in any part of the country leading to drop in energy output, other areas would continue to function instead of affecting the entire nation in a single network.

The energy expert who made the suggestion during an interview with Channels TV SunriseDaily Talk show on Wednesday pointed out that as the country is growing in population there is a need for a conscious effort to boost the power supply to meet the energy demand of the people.

Nigeria’s power sector problem is seemingly becoming intractable as some have observed, with the output hanging around 4,000 megawatts in a country with a population of over 200 million.

The national power grid has reportedly collapsed for the third time in 2022 with the latest on Friday, April 8, throwing many parts of the country into darkness.

According to the former minister of power, Nigeria needs a higher amount of energy not the current 4,000 megawatts output or 13,000 megawatts installed capacity; and such requires significant investment both in the generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure.

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Nnaji said the electric power facility at Aba (Aba Independent Power Project) which his company, Geometric power recently took over, serves as a model for what electric power infrastructure should be as it has both generation and distribution facilities embedded, making it autonomous and with the capacity to generate more than what the entire Aba area where it is domiciled needs.

He also said there is a need to create power reserves to serve as a buffer when a part breaks down to avoid total collapse, and also stressed the need for regular maintenance of power transmission lines.

On the side of the distribution, Nnaji agreed with President Buhari that one of the problems of the sub-sector was that the people who took over during privatization mostly didn’t have the technical and financial capacity to manage them, and suggested that more private investors should be allowed to come in to shore up the capital requirements in order to boost operations.

He further stated that Discos should invest significantly in infrastructure and metering of consumers to avoid load rejection and equally give consumers fair billing.