OpeOluwani Akintayo
11 September 2017, Sweetcrude, Lagos — The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has rubbished recent claim made by owner of Egbin Power Plant, Dallas Peavey Jnr., that the company could not evacuate 700 megawatts of electricity due to the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN’s weak transmission lines, describing the statement as “lying at worst or at best being bombastic”.
The Minister came to the rescue of TCN at the 19th monthly Power Sector Operators meeting organised by Eko Disco, held at Akangba, Surulere today.
According to the minister, records as at 2nd September, around the time the news was reported, Egbin’s peak power production was 344 MW, while the average power production was 336 MW.
“This is less than 50% of the 700 MW in the report credited to Mr. Peavey that his company could not evacuate”, Fashola said.
“We know that Egbin has 6 turbines of 220 MW each, with an installed capacity of 1,320 MW. It was the first power plant I visited when I was appointed Minister,” he added.
Fashola revealed that three turbines, ST 1, ST 5 and ST6 owned by Egbin are not functional.
“ST 6 for undisclosed faults and ST 1 and ST 5 for maintenance. So Egbin Power Plc was not producing 700MW at the time”.
Instead, Fashola said Mr. Peavey should have informed the media that TCN’s wheeling capacity had exceeded over 6,500MW.
Last week Wednesday, Mr. Peavey said in Lagos that 700MW was trapped due to inadequate transmission infrastructure.
According to him, out of roughly 1, 300MW currently generated by the facility’s six units, some 700MW get lost because the grid is overwhelmed.
