The Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) says it is discussing with willing buyers in Nigeria and Togo to sell part of its stranded electricity generation capacity.
The Executive Director (Generation), NDPHC, Kassim Abdullahi, an engineer, disclosed this during his inspection visit to the Calabar Power Plant, Odukpani, Cross River State on Friday.
The plant is wholly-owned by NDPHC under the National Integrated Power Programme (NIPP) has five gas turbine units with a total installed power generation capacity of about 600 megawatts (MW).
Mr Abdullahi who described the plant as one of the best amongst NDPHC plants with uninterrupted availability of gas and good dispatch network, said it has a total capacity of 560MW available power for dispatch when all its units are firing.
Already, he said the NDPHC has a power purchase agreement in place to supply 70MW of power to the West African nation of Togo from the Calabar power plant, in addition to another discussion currently ongoing to supply another 100MW of electricity to Paradise City in Calabar.
“The Calabar power plant is doing very well. The Calabar plant is one of our best power generation stations under NDPHC. It is one of the power stations with good gas supply, where we have a gas supply agreement (GSA) with ACCU Gas. The power station also has a good dispatch network and some eligible customers as well,” Mr Abdullahi said.
The director said he was visiting the plant as part of the on-going inspection and routine maintenance usually conducted on all NDPHC power stations across the country.
He said the Calabar plant has two power generation units currently running, after the third unit, which was available on the grid was closed down due to the instability and some frequency controls issues.
Also, another two units are undergoing routine maintenance on the transformer lube oil system as well as a Boroscope inspection exercise carried out on the engines.
On the Eligible Customer framework being deployed by the company. Mr Abdullahi said the arrangement was one of the key relieves for the power sector has in Nigeria.
He said most of the power stations owned by the NDPHC today are limited in their operations, because of the power dispatch challenges, saying most of them are hardly doing the full capacity due to grid constraint.
However, with the eligible customers framework, he said the NDPHC was able to commence some serious drive and engagements with willing buyers of power to dispose of the stranded capacity.
“Calabar is one of the power plants where the NDPHC has a bilateral power purchase agreement (PPA) with Togo to supply about 70MW. Also, there are on-going discussions with other potential customers in Calabar and environs, like the Paradise City, who are willing to off-take 100MW.
“This is the way to go. We are working tirelessly in getting more eligible customers to ensure that the available stranded power that we have in most of the power stations are dispatched,” he said.
The Chief Operating Officer of Calabar Power Plant, Oyewale John, said the plant has remained the best through the support of NDPHC management and the good operation and maintenance team at the plant.
“Even though, there are lots of challenges, we are able to surmount them because of the cooperation between the Calabar plant and NDPHC. With the experience we have gained over time from other power plants, we are able to keep the plant going, because of the existing cooperation in the O&M team”, he added.
While thanking the company’s management for supporting the team, Mr John said “each time we want something from them, they quickly get it to us and allow us to progress”.
He disclosed that at the time of the inspection when two units were working, the plant was sending 225MW to the national grid due to frequency control.
