THE Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, says Nigeria is on track to add 150mw to the national grid before the end of 2024.
Adelabu said this on Thursday while briefing State House Correspondents after a closed-door meeting with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
According to him, the upgrade will be made due to the successful completion of the pilot phase of the Presidential Power Initiative (PPI).
“We have completed the pilot phase of this project, up to 80%. This involves the importation, installation, and commissioning of 10 power transformers and 10 powermobile substations. They’ve been imported. They’ve been installed, and lots of them have been commissioned. We have just about two left to be commissioned before the end of the year,” the minister said.
“The positive impact of this is that it has added nothing less than 750 megawatts to our transmission grid capacity, which is why the relative stability that we are seeing in the grid today is the direct positive impact of the pilot stage completion.
“So, we believe that before the end of the year, an additional 150 megawatts capacity is going to be added upon completion of the entire pilot phase.”
The minister’s comment came at a time that the national grid collapsed for the 12th time in the year, plunging millions of homes into darkness.
Experts have blamed old infrastructure among other factors for the incessant national grid collapse.
But Adelabu has assured that Nigerians will have a better experience going forward.
“When we are done with the Phase One project in the transmission, the entire grid will not remain the same, and that’s why we are telling Nigerians that this is a very old grid. It’s quite fragile and it’s dilapidating,” he said.
“We need to revamp the entire grid for us to be sure of stability going forward.”
