Wednesday, 29 December 2010 00:00 Olusola Bello

-Generation drops to 2,400 mw a day after reaching 3,600 mw
-Blames it on lack of gas

The country has been thrown back into darkness as a result of system collapse experienced by the power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) with power generation dipping to 2,400 mw, leaving most of the country without light since Monday. 

This incidentally is coming less than one week after the company assured of steady supply during the Yuletide and beyond when its generation reached 3,400 mw.

The officials of the company have since been battling to resuscitate the system which knocked off the entire power system.

The situation became worse when the Egbin and Ughelli power stations which normally blackstart after such experience could not pick up because of technical problems.

Blackstarting is the process by which a power station automatically restarts again after it has collapsed and thereby energises the other power stations to pick up and continue with generation.

The system collapse was caused by of lack of gas to Egbin and AES plants which were generating 1,200 megawatts before the incident happened.  This is in spite the assurance by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) that there would be enough gas for the power plants to generate electricity.

The grid system being operated by PHCN, according to experts, resulted in the collapse of Egbin affecting the whole network. With the loss of 1,200 mw, no other plant is available to take care of the vacuum created by the outing of Egbin, and consequently,  other plants began to trip off one after  the other.

The PHCN executive director, operations, John Ayodele, said that everything was being done to restore the plants and make them serve Nigerians better.

As of yesterday, only two units of Egbin were working, while the third unit is expected to come on stream today.  The two other units are expected to come on stream in the course of the week. Egbin has an installed capacity of 1,320 mw.

Before it collapsed, the power station was generating 1,009mw, while AES was generating 209 mw.

From the available record  the  premier power station,  Egbin’s generation capacity rose  from a little below 500 mw a  few days  before Christmas to 1,009 mw on Christmas day. About three   units of the power station were switched off for maintenance before then. These units  are now up and  running. The AES is also  generating  209 mw; Kainji  is generating 315 mw; Jebba hydro is doing 320 mw even when  it has  the capacity to generate 500. Afam IV generates 60 mw with one  unit, while Afam  VI  hits 405 mw. Omotosho comes up to 25.8 mw; Omoku 26mw; trans Amadi 27.7mw; Shiroro 300 mw, and Delta 340 mw.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had told BusinessDay shortly before Christmas that effort were being made to ensure that the Utorogu gas plant rehabilitation was completed and made to supply gas to the power plants. The NNPC group general manager, public affairs, Levi Ajuonuma, said Nigerians would get a steady power supply as gas supply to the plants would be adequate.

But efforts to get him to explain why the sudden change in plan did not yield result, as he did not answer his phone. The managing director of the Nigerian Gas Company, Saidu Mohammed, also did not answer his phone.

Ileke-IdI:

Are you saying that after all these years that I've been thinking they crashed, they were actually "working"?

Ileke-IdI:

Are you saying that after all these years that I've been thinking they crashed, they were actually "working"?

Ileke-IdI:

Are you saying that after all these years that I've been thinking they crashed, they were actually "working"?

The situation became worse
when the Egbin and Ughelli
power stations which normally
blackstart after such experience
could not pick up because of
technical problems.

Woke4all:

This news is not true coz i have been in Ughelli since december 22 and there hv been steady power supply since my stay,

Woke4all:

This news is not true coz i have been in Ughelli since december 22 and there hv been steady power supply since my stay,

koruji:

Well, miracles can happen you know, as long as gas is available

It is sad that GEJ was boasting about this on facebook a few days ago. In the same way the government was talking about Jos b/4 the latest wahala.

There was one headline today with something like "Niger Delta Pacified". What's going to happen next in ND? Anybody can guess that!!!

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/offor-decapua-niger-delta-29dec10-112602459.html
http://www.businessdayonline.com/NG/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=17031:car-explodes-yenagoa&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50

Kobojunkie:

Just when I was about to rejoice that we were finally comfortably in the 3600's, we fall back to pre-2009 numbers. Yikes!
Not necessarily. Even with all the noise, the average for 2010 is likely around 2400MW. It's been up and down down down, most of the year in fact

Ileke-IdI:

So basically, anything he talks about ends up in chaos. Abeg Oga JEGA, dont put mouth for ekiti matter


LOL! Arent we supposed to be accumulating more Ws? Which way are we going? up or down?

koruji:

That you have power in Ughelli does not mean the Ughelli plant is up and running. Besides the story did say they are trying to get the plants back up.

The question is how long can a country start and stop like this on crucial power supply. If it is not gas today, it will be something else tomorrow.

Ileke-IdI:

So basically, anything he talks about ends up in chaos. Abeg Oga JEGA, dont put mouth for ekiti matter

LOL! Arent we supposed to be accumulating more Ws? Which way are we going? up or down?

Beaf:

There are serious issues with our gas supply infrastructure. For instance, the SE (for reasons best known to past govts) is completely cut off from the rest of the country gas wise, whereas Eastern Nigeria is very important in gas production. Port Harcourt is in the East, same as our highest oil producing state, Akwa ibom, same as Bayelsa and Rivers.
The problem is so gross, that there could be abundant gas coming from Delta state, but absolutely none in the East and vice-versa. How we could have ended up with such an arrangement is beyond me. It ranks right up there with how we signed all of our gas supplies to foreign countries up till 2015. Way above that though, is that it is a serious security problem for the country, if an enemy were to attack, then the isolation of the East would make it easy to knock out 100% of Nigeria's power supply, a very dire situation indeed.

So far there has been a lot of frantic behind the scenes work to normalise our gas infrastructure and bring it up to date (hence the record amount of power supplied last week), because govt seems serious about power supply, but it will take time to get some things right, there might be further hiccups. of course, being Nigeria, there might also be some mago mago dealings. But we will get there.

NNPC has to answer quite serious questions about how gas supply they had guaranteed could drop so low as have a chain effect that knocked out plants across the nation.

Beaf:

[b]There are serious issues with our gas supply infrastructure. For instance, the SE (for reasons best known to past govts) is completely cut off from the rest of the country gas wise, whereas Eastern Nigeria is very important in gas production. Port Harcourt is in the East, same as our highest oil producing state, Akwa ibom, same as Bayelsa and Rivers.
The problem is so gross, that there could be abundant gas coming from Delta state, but absolutely none in the East and vice-versa. How we could have ended up with such an arrangement is beyond me. [/b]It ranks right up there with how we signed all of our gas supplies to foreign countries up till 2015. Way above that though, is that it is a serious security problem for the country, if an enemy were to attack, then the isolation of the East would make it easy to knock out 100% of Nigeria's power supply, a very dire situation indeed.

So far there has been a lot of frantic behind the scenes work to normalise our gas infrastructure and bring it up to date (hence the record amount of power supplied last week), because govt seems serious about power supply, but it will take time to get some things right, there might be further hiccups. of course, being Nigeria, there might also be some mago mago dealings. But we will get there.

NNPC has to answer quite serious questions about how gas supply they had guaranteed could drop so low as have a chain effect that knocked out plants across the nation.

netotse:

i see someone has been reading the power sector roadmap. . .lol

@thread
it takes a couple of days(sometimes even weeks) to recover from a system collapse, so no one should expect things to get better immediately

and a system collapse isn't caused by lack of gas, it's caused by the generators being overloaded(in extremely simple english)

Beaf:

Ok, lets get pedantic.
Lack of gas cuts out some plants which puts weight on others, leading to overloading, leading to their short down and system collapse. . .
Happy Xmas by the way.

Beaf:

There are serious issues with our gas supply infrastructure. For instance, the SE (for reasons best known to past govts) is completely cut off from the rest of the country gas wise, whereas Eastern Nigeria is very important in gas production. Port Harcourt is in the East, same as our highest oil producing state, Akwa ibom, same as Bayelsa and Rivers.
The problem is so gross, that there could be abundant gas coming from Delta state, but absolutely none in the East and vice-versa. How we could have ended up with such an arrangement is beyond me. It ranks right up there with how we signed all of our gas supplies to foreign countries up till 2015. Way above that though, is that it is a serious security problem for the country, if an enemy were to attack, then the isolation of the East would make it easy to knock out 100% of Nigeria's power supply, a very dire situation indeed.

So far there has been a lot of frantic behind the scenes work to normalise our gas infrastructure and bring it up to date (hence the record amount of power supplied last week), because govt seems serious about power supply, but it will take time to get some things right, there might be further hiccups. of course, being Nigeria, there might also be some mago mago dealings. But we will get there.

NNPC has to answer quite serious questions about how gas supply they had guaranteed could drop so low as have a chain effect that knocked out plants across the nation.

“The plants have been shut down several times because the operating manuals of the stations are written in Chinese and the PHCN workers have been encountering difficulties in running the plants. So, the government thinks it will be better to sell them to the Chinese contractors, who installed the machines,” the top government source said.

jaygetta:

GEJ! Lol. Anything he says, the opposite happens! Oya, please say "Nigeria will live 2011 and beyond" . . . Make we all know say the time wey everything go take dabaru finish don reach!lol

jaygetta:

GEJ! Lol. Anything he says, the opposite happens! Oya, please say "Nigeria will live 2011 and beyond" . . . Make we all know say the time wey everything go take dabaru finish don reach!lol