ELECTRICITY

The Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) was formed in 2005 as the legal vehicle to implement the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) using private sector best business models.

NDPHC was funded from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) of the Federation of Nigeria with equity distribution at 18 percent, states at 35 percent and local governments at 47 percent.

In this analysis, Daily Trust dissects the over N3 trillion investments in the NIPPs and their impacts in bridging the power sector infrastructure gap.

This is just as NDPHC plans the NIPP Phase 2 to consolidate on its 14 year of infrastructure delivery in the sector.

NIPPs add 4,500MW power to grid in 14 years

Prior to the conception of the NIPP/NDPHC in 2005, Nigeria could barely generate 2,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity, but 14 years into its operation, the country now boasts of over 10,00MW installed capacity, with 4,528MW added by the NIPP plants.

Domiciled in the Presidency, NDPHC was funded by ECA with capital funding of about $8.46 billion (about N3.058 trillion) during this period.

The company through the NIPP mandate built 10 gas-fired power stations with a combined installed capacity of 4,528.5MW.

“Today, the NDPHC-built power plants contribute an average of 900MW to the national grid, with about 820MW idle for reasons of evacuation capacity,” the projects’ brief obtained yesterday stated.

During the Phase 1 of the NIPP, the company built several gas pipelines and its accessories to deliver natural gas to the 10 NIPP power plants.

Expanding transmission, distribution networks

As at 2005, Nigeria had 4,495 kilometre (km) transmission line capacity on 330 kilovolt (kV) lines. In terms of transformer capacity, the country had 5,300 mega volt ampere (MVA) capacity on the 330/132kV transmission band. It has another 5,700MVA capacity for 132/33kV transmission band.

Prior to the delivery of the NIPP projects, Nigeria had 8,148MVA distribution transformer capacity across the 33/11kV substations. At a step down level of 33kV, 11/0.41kV substation, it had 32,000MVA power supply capacity.

Comparatively, 14 years into the NIPPs implementation, NDPHC has raised bulk electricity transmission capacity on 330kV lines to 6,932km, signifying 46 percent increase. The transformer capacity on this 330/132Kv transmission band rose to 11,590MVA, showing a 93 percent increase from the 5,300MVA before the period.

The transformer capacity on 132/33kV transmission band also rose to 11,118MVA, higher by 42 percent. At the power distribution level, the 33/11kV substations rose by 43% capacity to 11,649MVA; 33kV and 11/0.41kV substations were increased by 163% to 84,170MVA capacity.

Further breakdown shows NIPP added 5,590MVA of 330/132kV transformer capacity; 3,313MVA of 132/33kV capacity; 2,194km of 330kV lines; 809km of 132KV lines; 10 330kV substations; and seven 132kV substations.

NDPHC also expanded 36 existing 330kV and 132kV substations. It executed 296 distribution projects nationwide, which brought in 3,540MVA injection substation capacity. Among other power distribution projects are the construction of 2,600km of 11kV lines for High Voltage Distribution System (HVDS), 25,900 Completely Self Protected (CSP) transformers and 1,700km of 33kV lines.

With the delivery of critical projects in power transmission and gas-to-power generation, NDPHC said new challenges emerged. The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has a wheeling capacity of about 8,100 megawatts (MW) but the load absorption capacity of the 11 Distribution Companies (DisCos) is only about 68 percent (about 4,600MW) of the TCN wheeling capacity.

This inadequacy of the distribution network leaves between 2,500MW to 3,000MW stranded generation capacity and the results are: shaky transmission grid integrity, frequency and load control issues, load rejection by DisCos poor infrastructure among