Force Discos to renew infrastructure before obsolete facilities flame up Nigeria—TCN
The Managing Director, Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Engr. Usman Mohammed has cried out to the Federal Government to a matter of urgent national importance issue policy directive forcing electricity Distribution Companies (Discos) to raise fund and change obsolete infrastructures.
He said the lack of investment in electricity distribution network by Discos is making power transmission equipment to fail and in many cases go up in flames in parts of Nigeria.
Explaining more to journalists during a tour of some TCN substations in Abuja Monday, Mohammed revealed that his agency has lost about $10m as a result of the failure of five transformers in Abuja, Anambra and Benin, a development that may continue if not addressed.
According to him, unless Discos are forced, they are not willing to make commensurate investment that will work seamlessly with several new infrastructures put in place by TCN across Nigeria.
TCN boss averred that “Why these transformers are failing. The distribution companies are not investing in their networks and because of this most of our transformers have to supply the customers of Discos directly. So there is no protection between our equipment and that of the Discos.
“And if there is a fault on their side, it hits our transformers directly and that is why we’ve been having transformer failures. This is why we are calling on the government to come up with a policy directive that will lead to the recapitalisation of the Discos. We are also calling on Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to do a regulatory order that will lead to the recapitalisation of Discos.”
Continuing, Mohammed revealed that “This is because out of the 731 interfaces between us and the Discos, only 421 are fully protected. The rest are not protected and these unprotected areas are places where we’ve been losing our transformers. Recently, we lost two in Abuja, one in Onitsha and another two in Benin.
He added that “And if we don’t have protection on the side of the Discos, we will continue to lose our transformers. So protection requires investment on the side of the Discos, which is why we are calling on the government to come up with a regime that will force the Discos to recapitalise.”
TCN boss argued that whereas electricity is mainly managed through the protection of power equipment, he insisted that “Between us and the Discos there is meant to be an injection substation where they will also have their own protection. And on our side, we will have our protection that will isolate the substation from the main grid. So when there is no investment coming from the Discos, we will be supplying their customers directly and this is a problem.”
