16 July 2015, Lagos – Stakeholders in the country’s power sector have been urged to invest more in modular plants to drive efficiency in the industry.
The President/Chief Executive Officer, PowerHouse Energy Africa, Mr. Femi Ogun, said this in an interview with our correspondent.
He said all over the world, people were moving away from building massive power plants, and now constructing smaller ones.
He said, “Everybody is going away from large power plants. Instead of investing so much in gigantic power plants, Nigeria should act like other countries where so much is being invested in modular power plants. With the cases of terrorism and other vices rising, it has become increasingly risky to spend so much in building gigantic power plants. I want us to picture a case where a gigantic power plant is blown up by terrorists.
“If you build modular power plants all over the place, it is impossible for anybody to blow up all of them at the same time. If there is a problem with one of the plants, the effect won’t be very significant. The truth is that for a nation, no one solution can solve the problem.”
He said aside from natural gas, there were other alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and waste that the government should look at to generate power off-grid.
He added, “We should explore all sorts of options. In Europe, America and other continents, all available sources of energy are explored.”
He said the quantum of thrash (waste) generated in a state like Lagos, for instance, was on the rise, as the state was reportedly collecting over 10,000 metric tonnes of waste per day.
“This is aside from the illegal dumpsites. That is a lot of waste. There are companies in Nigeria that can generate power with the waste. All they need is the enabling environment to allow them to bring about the change,” he said.
According to Ogun, there are many technologies currently in use globally to generate power using waste, adding that everybody should be allowed to bring their technologies so that there would be competition.
He added, “The ones that cannot survive would go somewhere else. With this, the consumer will be better for it. If this is allowed to thrive, in the beginning it might not be rosy, but in the long run, market forces would sort things out and the consumers will then be paying competitive prices for good electricity services.”
– Punch