Financial Energy Review
………Egbin May Hit 1000MW from 7OOMW……..
………Ben Ndubuwa………….
There are strong indications that the maintenance work on the gas pipeline supplying gas to Egbin power plant may have been completed by Nigeria Gas Company (NGC) and the power plant is set to go full throttle on it power supply to the national grid.
The statement by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) a couple of days back that Egbin power plant will be shut down for 3 days because of gas pipeline maintenance work had led to concerns and worries among power consumers given that this a festive period when Nigerians needs regular and constant power supply.
According to TCN statement the general public are being notified that as at 11:13 hours of 18th December 2023, Egbin Power generating station was shut down to allow the Nigeria Gas Company (NGC) to maintain linking gas pipelines supplying gas to Egbin Power station
“The station will be shut down for 3 days from today. This means a reduction of 676MW of bulk power generated into the nation’s grid for 3 days consequently the quantum of bulk power available to be delivered to distribution companies load centres nationwide for the period” the statement had said.
However a source in Egbin power plant told Financial Energy Review that indeed the power generation station really went down to zero and was actually as a result of NGC carrying out maintenance work on the link gas pipeline to Egbin but now the maintenance is completed and Egbin is back on track. “Egbin before the shutdown was doing between 700MW to 800MW and I can tell you for the six units about 1000MW is generated now”
The shutdown initially scheduled for three days saw a decrease in the quantum of bulk power delivered to the transmission network from generation companies, dropping to 4,477.7MW peak generation on Tuesday, December 19, 2023, when maintenance began.
The generation from the GenCos to the national grid was later restored to 4,799.9MW on Sunday, December 24, 2023, when it was confirmed completed. Following the completion of maintenance on a pipeline supplying gas to Egbin Power Station, the plant experienced a partial restoration of power, with 338MW added as of 9 a.m. on Monday, December 2023, out of the 676MW of bulk power generated, translating to about 50% of the plant’s current capacity.
It is also said that the partial restoration of generation at the Egbin power plant increased the bulk power available to be delivered to Ibadan IBEDC to 502MW from about 362MW, while Benin DisCo is still receiving 341MW. As a result power has been restored to some part of Lagos, Ogun and Osun.
The Egbin power station is located in the Ikorodu area of Lagos state and supplies around 16 percent of the total electricity to the National Grid. It has an installed capacity of 1320MW which makes it the largest provider of electricity in Nigeria.
