…Says new power equipment ready by December
21 August 2011, Sweetcrude, Oshogbo – Minister of Power, Prof. Barth Nnaji, says the installation of the System Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) at the Transmission Company of Nigeria, Oshogbo, will be completed in December.
Nnaji made this known at the weekend during a two-day facility tour to the company. He was accompanied by Minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku.
SCADA is used for monitoring and gathering of operational data through Remote Terminal Unit of power stations and substations across the country.
Nnaji said the new system would ensure that the nation’s power supply was effectively controlled to serve the entire country and improve power generation, distribution and transmission.
“There is an ongoing new system called SCADA, which is planned to be fully installed by December, as promised by the contractor, so as to detect fault in any part of the transmission line. The system will be controlled from here (Oshogbo), to ensure stability and regular power supply, ” he said.
Nnaji said that the contractor handling the installation had assured him that the SCADA would be installed before the end of the year to avoid system failure, adding that efforts were ongoing to ensure that the country’s power generation hit 5,000 mega watts by December.
The minister said that after achieving the target, government would work hard to hit the targeted 6,000 mega watts generation by 2012.
He said that the power stations under the National Integrated Power Projects as well as the existing power plants would add about 600 megawatts to the grid between now and December.
Mr Jonathan Ndiagwalukwe, the General Manger, System Operation, Transmission Company of Nigeria, explained that the company was tackling a lot of challenges to attain government’s objectives in the sector.
He said the challenges included generation, gas supply, distributions, poor performance of line relays and frequent tripping of critical transmission lines.
Ndiagwalukwe said that the new SCADA would enhance effective control of the national grid, adding that the current one, which had been in use since 2001 was from the system at the Supplementary National Control Centre (SNCC) in Shiroro, Niger.
He said the poor state of the distribution network had made it vulnerable to rainstorm, adding that “whenever it rains, several distribution feeders trip out on fault”.
He ontinued: “The numbers of reactors for voltage control in the system is inadequate; some high voltage nodes like Birnin Kebbi and Onitsha have no reactors. There is a need for an additional reactor in Benin and Oshogbo to support the existing ones. On the other hands, the Northern part of the country suffers from low voltage due to very long distance between the loading centre and the generation stations.”
