The Nigerian government recently announced that it has delivered and deployed the necessary facilities to raise the country’s electricity output by around 1,600 megawatts under Phase One of the Presidential Power Initiative (PPI). The initiative is a partnership between the Federal Government of Nigeria and the German firm, Siemens. The goal of the project is to grow Nigeria’s grid power generation to 25,000MW, and the first phase has already reached an advanced stage.
According to the Federal Government of Nigeria Power Company, which was established to secure financing and coordinate stakeholders to deliver the PPI projects, they have received about 80% of the equipment required for the pilot project, which is being deployed to critical sites across the country to improve power transmission capacity. Kenny Anuwe, the Managing Director of FGN Power Company, explained that the first phase of the PPI would add 2,000MW of power to the national grid. With the delivery of 80% of the equipment, this means the government has provided equipment needed to increase power generation by about 1,600MW.
Anuwe stated that the pilot phase would unlock the immediate constraints in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry through the deployment of ten power transformers and ten mobile substations across the country. The Nigeria-Siemens PPI initiative will be delivered in three phases; the first phase focuses on ‘quick win’ measures to increase operational capacity to 7,000MW from the current capacity of about 5,000MW.
The second phase targets expanding the capacity of the transmission and distribution systems to enable the evacuation of up to 11,000MW of electricity to consumers, while the third phase aims to expand the power grid’s capacity to 25,000MW. This will be achieved through further expansion of generation, transmission, and distribution systems.
Despite being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which created a backlog in Siemens’ production and limited the availability of manufacturing slots, the project has remained on track. A visit by the Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, the management of FGN Power Company, and other key officials to Germany in April 2022 played a significant role in mitigating the manufacturing challenges.
The Nigeria-Siemens PPI project aims to resolve capacity deficits in metering infrastructure, transmission and distribution end-to-end system constraints, power systems and network development studies, as well as securing financing for the entire project implementation. The initiative is a quick-win intervention strategy that will improve electricity access to millions of Nigerians. As the project continues to deliver upgraded and expanded electricity supply, it will bring about a socio-economic benefit to Nigerians.
