In an effort to stop the continued collapse of the national grid, the federal government ended plans to build what it called a supergrid.
This was announced by the media assistant to the Minister of Energy, Bolaji Tunji, in a statement he made available to the press on Tuesday.
According to him, the Minister of Energy, Adebayo Adelabu, spoke in China where he attended the China-Africa Cooperation Committee.
“If we look at the power, capacity and age of our existing network in the National Grid, it cannot really support our vision for the electricity sector, hence the need for the construction of the Western Super Grid and Oriental.
“Although we have been on this topic since my resume, I can also tell you that the president fully supports this initiative because it will improve our transmission network, stabilize the network and also increase the capacity and flexibility of the national network.
Adelabu said 90% of the necessary approvals are in place and will be granted soon.
In May, a former energy minister, Barth Nnaji, argued for a supergrid to end the ongoing collapse of the national grid.
Nnaji said the current national network kept collapsing because it was not well structured.
Nnaji said the Ministry of Power under his leadership years ago sought the approval of the Federal Executive Council to build what he called a super grid, a 765 KV grid that will rise above the existing 330 KV.
According to him, 765 KV is big enough. He disclosed that the country still does not have a transmission network that can transport electricity from Manbilla once completed.
“Another critical area of Nigeria’s energy sector is the transmission network. I think having a national network as it is today will always be a problem. First of all, it is not strong and it is not well structured. I call in favor of multiple networks, autonomous but connected to the national network. Because the national network continues to function and be more powerful.
This will help correct the regular incident of national grid failure.
“When I was in government, we asked the Federal Executive Council to approve what we called the super grid, a 765 kV grid that will be elevated slightly above the existing 330 kV network. Currently, Nigeria has 330 kV and 132 kV, but neither is really strong. But the 765 kV network will be very important to support electricity from plants like the one in Manbilla that has been in operation for a long time. “More than 10,000 megawatts of electricity is coming from Manbilla.
The question then is what transmission infrastructure will transport this energy if we finish it now. We need a super grid to transport this energy so that Nigeria has the capacity to capture the electricity from different plants and transport where we want,” he revealed.
