Amidst lamentations on the inadequate supply of electricity in Nigeria, the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has said Azura Power West Africa should serve as a model on how power generating plants should operate in the country.
He made the declaration in Benin City during a working visit to Azura power plant, as part of the federal government's deliberate plan to ascertain reasons behind the low power output in recent times.
He said Azura power plant is operating at optimal capacity and feeds the national grid daily with about 460 megawatts of electricity.
"I am more than impressed with the model they have deployed. It is a private sector power plant with three turbines installed, and all of them are operational generating 430 megawatts.
"They don't have issues of gas supply; technical issues, breakdown of turbines and operational logjam. That is the way things should run in Nigeria," he stated.
The minister, who expressed satisfaction with their operations, added that the turbines are new and the company has an expansion plan to install three additional gas plants.
There are also plans also to install steam plants which will see the expansion bring installed capacity to about 1,500 megawatts. "If that happens, the issue of shortage in power supply will be history."
Adelabu noted that the company has a firm gas supply contract and the major difference between Azura Power and that other power plants is the fact that they are able to meet their obligations with gas suppliers as at when due.
"They don't owe suppliers so if I am a gas company my efforts and loyalty will be to the company that pays promptly. So we are going to use that as a model to restructure and engineer all federal government-owned power plants to ensure that the same template is applied to projects that are ongoing across the country."
The minister challenged players in the industry to be more patriotic in their dealings with the government, saying the current short supply and a significant decline in the generation of electricity is caused by inadequate supply of gas.
According to him, beyond the intervention by government, industry players have a big role to play as clearly demonstrated by Azura not defaulting in ensuring that daily production and supply to the national grid are sustained uninterruptedly.
He said President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has mandated the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Budget and National Planning and the Ministry of Power to work out modalities to defray outstanding debts to gas suppliers and generation companies in the power sector.
He stated that in no distant time, it will come out with a repayment plan and guarantee instruments that will allow gas companies to access federal government's gas wells in order to settle debts owed by the government.
"Very soon, effective and consistent gas supply will resume to enable power plants operating below capacity to improve in the generation component of the power sector value chain," he added.
Earlier, the Managing Director of Azura Power West Africa? Engineer Edu Okeke, disclosed that the power plant was built and completed eight months ahead of schedule because of the technical expertise of the construction team and the commitment of the company.
"Our operational metrics are best in class and availability close to 100 per cent at all times. We help to stabilize the grid to make sure that other power plants are able to feed on what is available, we also believe that our model is the way to go in order to eliminate in entirety the challenges associated with inadequate supply of electricity."
Okeke said the company constructed a gas station within the power plant to ensure steady and uninterrupted supply of gas to power the turbines, describing the generation of electricity as real-time business that requires competence, expertise, commitment and above all patriotism to the country.
Azura Edo was built by a consortium composed of Siemens and Julius Berger in exactly 28 months. Its completion occurred eight months ahead of its 36-month construction schedule, and without a single lost time injury.
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As a result of this best in class construction performance, Azura Edo IPP has become a performance benchmark for other large-scale infrastructure projects across the African continent.
The plant was commissioned in the first quarter of 2018 and attained full commercial operations. Since then, the plant operational performance has been amongst the highest of any new built plant anywhere in the World. Its availability rate to date has exceeded 94 percent, and its equivalent forced outage rate has been lower than 1 per cent.
The plant is also Nigeria's most heavily despatched, with rates averaging 90 per cent, during the last four quarters, in other words, each of the plant's three turbines is constantly in operation and generating power as close to their maximum capacity.
Consequently, during the six years in commercial operation, the company has provided above 9 per cent of the power sent to the national grid.
