Siemens project to boost power supply in Nigeria – AEDC

The Federal Government driven Siemen Power Project will improve power supply in the country, an Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) official has said.

Mr Oyebode Fadipe, AEDC’s General Manager, Corporate Communication, disclosed this to our reporter on Monday in Abuja.

President Muhammadu Buhari gave the green light to Germany’s Siemens AG to rehabilitate and expand the country’s electricity capacity to 25,000 megawatts (MW) by 2025.

The agreement was signed between Siemens and the Nigerian government for a six-year agreement in July, 2019.

“Our goal is simply to deliver electricity to Nigerian businesses and homes. Our intention is to ensure that our cooperation is structured under a government-to-government framework.

“No middlemen will be involved so that we can achieve value for money for Nigerians,” the President said.

The project will be developed in three phases.

The first phase of the project includes increasing the amount of power delivered by additional 2,000 MW and significantly reducing losses across the grid with added stability and reliability.

In the second phase, the grid capacity is expected to be increased from 7,000 MW – which will be produced from the first phase – to 11,000 MW.

While in the third phase, the operators will work on additional transmission and distribution assets upgrade and large-scale power project to increase the grid capacity from 11,000 MW to 25,000 MW.

Fadipe said that the AEDC was recognised in this project, adding that a number of distribution sub-stations would come up and transmission networks strengthened.

“And once those two are strengthened, it will also affect generation companies. So, the project is a fundamental project in the power improvement plan.

“Once the project is done, we will have more transformers in the network and more load will become more available and customers can also receive more power as it is coming.

Fadipe said that improvement of power supply was an ongoing project and the essence of privatisation is to improve the power sector.