Fashola urges Discos to provide metres
Electricity consumers in
the country may not be smiling yet as generation yesterday hit 4,068
mega watts still assessed as abysmally low.
Though consumers were
expected to be experiencing some respite from the recent days of
darkness the transmission line that tripped from Egbin Power Station
yesterday may have further dampened rising hopes.
This is coming
as the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) confirmed that about 21
power plants were presently operation across the country, while some
units are facing setback due to transmission, water management and
rainfall challenges.
Meanwhile, Minister of Power, Works and
Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) has charged electricity
distribution companies (DisCos) to ensure the provision of meters and
end the frustration of customers waiting for the never coming meters.
At
the third monthly meeting with operators of the power sector, yesterday
at the Ugwuaji Transmission Station, Enugu Fashola said : “The Federal
Government would no longer condone a situation where people pay for
meters and fail to access them within a reasonable time-frame.”
The
Public Relation Officer of Transmission Company of Nigeria, Lagos
Region, Mrs Celestina Osin, who confirmed the faults on the Egbin bound
transmission line yesterday said the blackout experienced in Lekki, Ajah
axis since Sunday, March 13th was a result of a detachment on the sky
wire of the Egbin-Ajah 330KV Transmission Line three which feeds the
area.
She said the maintenance engineers are already at work to
rectify the fault as quickly as possible, with the aim of getting
customers back to the system.
The Head of Corporate
Communications, Eko Electricity Distribution Company, Godwin Idemudia,
said the line trip had made it impossible for customers being serviced
from Ajah, Lekki and Alagbon transmission injection sub-stations to
receive power supply.
Areas listed to have been affected by the
outage include Lagos Island, Ikoyi, Victoria Island Lekki, Ajah, Ibeju
and their environs.
Idemudia then appealed to customers to please
bear with the company adding that supply to all affected areas would be
restored as soon as the fault is cleared.
The Eko Disco
spokesman also assured that the company’s distribution facilities are in
good shape for effective evacuation of power to customers as soon as
the line fault between generation and transmission stations is fixed.
The
national statistics on generation profile showed that unutilised
generation capacity from the power stations hit 3,231.6MW as at Sunday
13th, while the nation was losing 1827.5MW to gas constraints; 409.6MW
lost to transmission line constraints; 85MW lost to water management
issues; and 909.5MW was lost to high frequency occasioned by heavy
rainfall.
The minister, who chaired the meeting raised hopes that
the present challenges militating against the supply of electricity in
the country would be surmounted only if Nigerians understood how the
system operates.
At the end of the meeting, he told journalists
they “addressed the problems of gas, financial stability, volatility of
foreign exchange in sectors as to how that affects the ability of the
power plants, the GenCos, the DisCos to implement their technical
service agreement with their foreign partners. It also addressed the
difficulty of pricing local gas consumption in dollars instead of
naira.”
On the problem of CAPMI metering system, he said: “We
resolved that people cannot take money from consumers without supplying
what was paid for. From the reports given to us by the DisCos, many of
them claimed that they have largely supplied the meters that people paid
in advance for.
“I made it clear to them that a situation where
people pay for meters and they are not supplied, undermines trust. We
have given them marching orders to wind down all the outstanding credit
meters program that they have collected money from people and haven’t
supplied.”
http://m.guardian.ng/news/mixed-fortunes-as-electricity-generation-hits-4068mw/
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