By Chris Ochayi – Abuja
The Niger Delta Power Holding Company of Nigeria, NDPHC, has announced plans to conduct a comprehensive audit of all the National Integrated Power Plants, NIPP, as parts of its preparedness to put to use all idle gas turbine for improved electricity generation in the country.
The Executive Director, Generation, Niger Delta Power Holding Company, NDPHC, Mr. Abdullahi Kassim disclosed this during a tour of three power plants including Omotosho, Ogorode, and Ihovbor (Benin) generation companies.
He stated that the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, chairman Board of NDPHC, had given the newly structured executive management of the company a marching order to bring back all the gas turbine units that are not in good condition, hence the audit.
According to him, the audit will expose the overview of critical issues that have hindered the plants to work optimally, stressing that the exercise will cover issues around security, man power gap, skills and expertise gap, among others, for urgent fixing.
“We are going to commence an audit of all the power plants. The audit will give us an overview of critical issues. Like the security audit will expose the challenges around security, like the mapping of all those security personnel around the power plants, the man power gap which was an issue raised by some of the COOs.
“Now, we will do an audit to understand how many people we have on those power plants, what are the needed skills and expertise and the gaps which we need to quickly fix.
”So the audit is going be a holistic approach to understand the general operational issues that will include the administrative issues, the maintenance issues, transportation and logistics issues, security issues and also the environmental issues in terms of how these power plants are supposed to be standardized to meet up with the international standards of operating power plants.”
Abdullahi also disclosed that NDPHC has initiated stakeholders engagements aimed at improving the evacuation of power from all power plants in the country.
“There is ongoing engagement with TCN, NERC, NBET trying to have a very good understanding and strategy on how we improve on our evacuation. Discussion is ongoing with the key stakeholders, there will be some follow-up meetings in the next week or so.
”So then we can agree to some terms on understanding how we can improve in the evacuation because most of the power plants are in NDPHC” he added.
On each of the power plants visited, the Chief Operating Officers (COOs) presented a long list of requests ranging from vehicles for logistics, apartments for security operatives, workers’ welfare including regularization of casual workers, to the provision of new transmission line for evacuation among other demands to which the Executive director, generation, pledged to put machineries in place to help tackle them immediately.
The COOs also said they pushing to expand the scope of eligible customers to enable them to evacuate power to industries, and companies requiring it through a willing buyer, willing seller mechanism.
Mohammed Idris Ginsau, the COO, Omotosho Generation Company Limited, also disclosed that the company has signed a contract with one eligible customer, but is working for hard prospecting other companies within the zone.
He assured that Omotosho is capable of serving more customers as they come, calling on prospective customers to effectively utilize the opportunity provided by the power company.
Also, Engr. Ayoade Olariwaju Bex the COO of Ogorede Generation Company, declared that the company has the capacity to will more than 70% of 504MW capacity, urging the National Control Centre to always put the Sapele based company on the bar.
“I want to plead that NCC should be putting us on the bar every day to cover 24 hours, 7 days in a week, 365 days in a year. We are more than capable of willing more than 70% of our capacity. Three units are fully available to do 24 hours service” he said.
Engr. Kalu Okpe, COO of Benin Generation Company Limited, said the plant has an ISO base of 504MW, adding that it is currently making contacts with prospective eligible customers for the supply of power.
“We have made contacts with some Tiling Industries, and some of the Chinese companies around to expand our eligible customers. What hindered our progress was COVID 19, some of these companies are Chinese and there were restrictions.
”We couldn’t make progress but in the last two weeks, we have resumed. We set up a committee, myself and Executive Director, Legal, and our representative in distribution BEDC we have given them our mandate. We are expecting them next week to give us a report on how far we have gone. But we are driving seriously” he said.
Vanguard News Nigeria