Having observed that the first supply line is getting constrained as usage and industries surge in Benin Republic, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) and the West African Power Pool (WAPP) have initiated plans to build a second 330 kilovolt (kV) transmission line to boost electricity supply to the Republic of Benin by 2021.
Interim Managing Director of TCN and Chairman, WAPP, Mr. Usman Gur Mohammed, disclosed this at a meeting to kick-off the project’s Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) Study in Abuja weekend.
The chairman said the transmission section of Nigeria’s power sector was also targeting to attain 20,000 megawatts (MW) transmission capacity within the next three years.
According to him “The second 330kV Ikeja West transmission line to Sakete in Benin Republic is necessary as the first could soon be constrained by the demand for more power from the Nigerian grid increase.”
Gur Mohammed explained that transmission was no longer the weakest link in the country’s electricity sector’s value chain as TCN now had a robust rehabilitation and expansion plan that had been endorsed by the ministries of power and finance and development partners. It is also intended to support the current institutional reform that will make TCN a 21st century compliant transmission firm.”
TCN has also embarked on a nationwide installation of transmission transformers with three installed in Lagos last week, two scheduled for the north and another three in the Port Harcourt region shortly. He said the TCN had saved cost of the installations of the transformers as the in-house engineers handled the projects at less than 10 per cent cost of what contractors would have used in the past.
The chairman also noted that the WAPP project would be supported by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and African Development Bank (AfDB), and that the ESIA study would be conducted in six months after which the construction would take another 24 months and then ready by 2021.
