TCN asks residents under high tension lines to leave to avoid electrocution

The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) will seek the help of Kaduna State Government to remove structures under high tension lines to avert electrocution.

The Managing Director of TCN, Mr Usman Gur, gave the hint in an interview with our reporter in Kaduna on Monday, and advised that those living in such structures should leave to avoid death.

It was learned that more than 1,200 houses are under the high tension lines in Rigassa area of Kaduna city alone.

Gur had earlier inspected work for the installation of Mega Volt Amps (MVA) and Kilovolt Amps (KVA) transformers in Mando and Kakuri areas of the city.

He said building around high tension wires must be between 15m and 25m away from such facilities.

He said after the inauguration of the facilities in June, electricity supply would stabilise as energy transmission would be constant and the high tension lines would be busy.

He said the various expansion and upgrading of facilities would lead to more energy being transferred through the high tension lines and make it highly dangerous for people to build and live under them.

Therefore, we are calling on those that have built under those lines to leave those houses because they are endangering their lives.

“If for any reason there is an accident and there is a snap, so many people will lose their lives.

“We are going to write to Kaduna State Government to help us remove those houses under the high tension.’’

Gur said the Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, would inaugurate the two newly installed transformers on June 11.

He said the mega transformers were being installed to build and provide more redundant facility that would enhance quick switchover of power transmission that would address power outage.

He said: “the essence of the new transformers we are installing is to build redundancy in power transmission.

“The standard is that if you need 60MVA you are supposed to have 60MVA in two places so that if there is a fault with the first 60MVA you immediately switch to the second one while you rectify the fault.

“So, that is what we are doing all over the country so that we can prevent power outage.

“Our objective is to move towards a stable and reliable power supply. Definitely, this is the march we are on, though, it is not something that can be achieved in one day.

“But we are marching on; there is no week that we don’t commission a new transformer in the last few months that we started.

“We are here to inspect the work we are doing here in Kaduna. We have gone to Mando Power Sub-station, where we have 330KVA and we have looked at the 150MVA which is under installation.

“We intend to commission the transformers on the 11th of June. The Minister of Works, Power and Housing will personally come to commission the transformers.

“We have also inspected on-going installation of 330KV lines from Kudende to Mando, which will help us evacuate the Kudende Power Station.

“The work is also going on fine; the contractor has done 21 of the 55 foundations,“ he said.

Gur said that major expansions were being carried out to increase the carrying capacity of such transformers under the incremental power policy of the Federal Government.

He said that the textile industry in Kaduna, which became moribund due to inadequate power supply, would soon bounce back when the projects were inaugurated.

“We are already in talks with the textile factories to see how we can ensure stable power supply for them.

“We also have a Chinese company that produces electrode that will soon come to Nigeria because we have assured them of constant power supply.

“Not only that, all the companies that ran to Ghana and other African countries will soon prefer to do business in Nigeria because the power supply here would be cheaper than most of the countries and that would serve as incentive that would attract investors, “he said.

“We have also inspected the construction of the lines from Mando to Kakuri Power Station. The work is in progress but it is very slow because people have built on the right of way.

“Also here in Kakuri, we have inspected two transformers. What we had here before were two 230MVA transformers and one 160MVA transformer.

“Also, under the transmission rehabilitation and expansion programme, we are putting additional new Sub-stations in Kaduna.

“We are not putting those new sub-stations because the existing ones are inadequate, we are putting them in anticipation of expansion of Kaduna, because Kaduna is fast expanding.

“We are putting a new 330KV sub-station in Millennium City, we are also putting 132KV sub-station in Rigasa, another 132KV Sub-station in Jaji and another 330KV Sub-station in Zaria.

“Also, we are putting 132KV sub-station in Birnin-Gwari. All these places I have mentioned, the Governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, has already given us land.“ he said.

Gur said “the capacity of transmission as at December 2017 was 7,124MW.

“We have generation and transmission capacity of 7,000MW, where we are lagging behind is the area of distribution.

“But even the distribution has expanded. When this government came in, distribution capacity was not more than 3,500 but it is now 5,222MW.

He, however, said that there were various challenges with distribution but that the Federal Government was addressing the issues.

“The Federal Government had recently approved N72 billion for investment in the distribution project, which the Ministry of Power and Transmission Company of Nigeria are jointly implementing,“ he said.