Opinion: How to break the 5,000 megawatts electricity ceiling

Editor's note: Government agencies in the power sector have been calling for the increased investment in the distribution arm of the industry in order to sustain the capacity expansion in the transmission and generation segments of the business.

In this article sent to Legit.ng, the managing director/chief executive officer of Gianni-Sam Nig. Ltd, Samuel Akinyele Caulcrick, writes about to break the 5,000 megawatts electricity ceiling.

The problem of Nigeria’s public utility electricity supply seems “the elephant in the room”. When the old Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), was unbundled in 2013, people in Nigeria heaved a sigh of relief.

Is the narrative on power faulty? “Narrative” governs human being’s behaviours, with favourable outcomes sometimes. Power supply problem in Nigeria remains intractable, befuddling to most of us, but could be as simple as a faulty narrative.

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In modern times, electricity continues to play a significant role in countries’ socio-economic and technological development. It is the most convenient and easily convertible form of energy but comes with a cost, and the cheapest is from a grid network because economies of scale.

Most economies increasingly deploy electricity to power industries; even automobiles; trains and buses; home appliances and working tools.

For most of my adult years, the cliché has been “nothing gets done without power” - we mean grid electricity because it is the cheapest and most convenient. To have electrical power, you only need to flick a switch - voila, it is there.

The uniqueness of electricity of not being able to put into storage on a national scale, like putting oil into drums, is a -major issue. That is changing as advancement in technology increases the storage capacity, such as lithium-ion battery and high potential in the vanadium redox flow battery.

The causes of the frequent power outages in Nigeria today, technically, is not of low generation capacity, as the narratives go, but more of the struggle by the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, to stabilise the electricity grid.

Nigeria already has over 12,900 megawatts of installed generation capacity managed by the six to be seven generation companies, the GenCos.

There are over 60 million private generators scattered all over the Nigerian landscape, with more than 58 million petrol (PMS) driven. Using subsidised gasoline (petrol) to generate electricity is an inefficiency in any economy, and the removal of subsidies is inevitable.

According to valid data, the use of PMS for generators accounts for over 43% of the daily use of subsidised petrol. That is a topic for another day.

The DisCos and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), bicker on who is most responsible for the various system collapse in the grid. The issue of insufficient gas, turnaround maintenance, and idle generators of the GenCos are constant narratives.

The widespread electricity thefts by consumers are alarming and could be the most significant obstacle, yet, the DisCos have to surmount. The most contentious of all is the unrealistic tariffs that the stakeholder’s claim do not cover the cost of grid electricity supply.

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), is out to protect consumers by having every electricity consumer metered. NERC’s delay in approving a cost-reflective tariff may affect the sustainability of power supply business in itself, and this precludes the ownership of the DisCos - private or government.

Why is Nigeria’s public electricity supply fraught with frequent power outages? The answer, partly, lies in how electrons flow in electricity during certain applications.

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In some specific applications, such as heating or during startup of an electric motor, there is a rush of current known in the industry as “inrush current”, which is sometimes noticeable as a flicker in a low capacity electric supply. In other countries, consumers are cautioned in the use of such appliances when a power supply is less than adequate.

The widespread use of air conditioners in present-day Nigeria without caution in a not enough reserve capacity to absorb the disturbances in the grid is the cause of the several system-collapses.

The compressors in the air conditioners are electric motors, and unpredictable to anticipate when they will start across any network.

Conventionally, the solution has remained the same from the 19th century for uninterrupted supply. It is to produce more energy than needed, which compensates for disturbances on the grid.

However, this reserve capacity, for the most part, goes to waste. Batteries or capacitors are possible solutions, such as UPS but such is of limited storage on a national scale.

Since Thomas Edison built the first power station in New York in 1882, electricity grid supply and its management has remained the same, and should not be the solution for the 21st Century. When using electricity for heating, the in-rush current is continuous, but for operations like air conditioning or refrigeration, it is only used to start the compressors.

The increasing incidences of system collapse somewhat coincide with increasing installations and widespread use of air conditioners in Nigeria without a substantial increase in the electricity supply capacity.

The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), is mandated to stabilise the grid. TCN currently is upgrading the reserve capacity.

It has chosen the spinning reserve capacity system, but that has its downside - it takes too much time to come online, and the fastest is about 10 minutes, and some may take hours or a day.

The familiar Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) and inverters store electricity for emergency use, but they come online in milliseconds without need to stabilise frequency. The solution to the 21st Century electricity supply must depart from the 19th Century practice and mimic those of the likes of inverters.

Fortunately, technology has advanced to provide storage in large volume on a national scale, using a lithium-ion battery or the vanadium redox flow battery. Renewable energy can also power the supplementary-reserve capacity to cut down on the cost of waste in reserve capacity.

The book, “Power In Nigeria, will there ever be light?”, is available for free download on www.powerinnigeria.com written by the author and published in November 2018. It is a concept to break the 5,000 megawatts ceiling of power supply in Nigeria.

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It calls for a shift in policy, by moving the subsidies initially for PMS that power petrol generators to discount the energy bills for industrial usage. Premised also is to increase (patronise) market share of locally produced goods to sustain growth in the power sector.

The views expressed in this interview/article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of Legit.ng.

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