The Director-General, Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission, Aminu Dikko, on Wednesday lamented the poor generation capacity of the Kainji Hydro Power Plant, stating that the power plant has never generated its installed capacity of 780 megawatts of electricity.
He stated this while speaking during an inspection tour of the facility.
The Kainji Hydro Power Plant was concessioned for 30 years to Mainstream Energy Solutions Limited in February 2013.
The agreement stated that Mainstream was to operate, restore and maintain the power plant in such a way as to increase the available capacity of the plant.
The cost estimate at the time of concession was $318.5m.
According to a statement issued by ICRC, Dikko said owing to the importance of the power sector to the nation’s economy, there was need to increase the performance of the Kainji hydro power plant.
He said, “Power issue is very sensitive in this country and Kainji Hydro Power Plant is one of the oldest in the country yet its supply has been epileptic.
“The essence of our coming here is to find out if the Concessionaire is keeping to his end of the bargain by investing financially in the facility and bring it to its full capacity of 760mw.
“So basically we are here to see how this Concessionaire has been performing and learn lessons to making Public-Private Partnership a success in the country.”
The Chief Engineer, Kainji Hydro Power Plant, Mr Jose Villegas expressed optimism that with the work carried out at the plant, about 490 megawatts of power would be generated by the end of May this year.
He said, “In 2013 when we took over, the plant was only generating 101mw and only two of the eight installed turbines were working.
“In 2014 we were able to get three of the turbines working and generating about 200mw and in 2015 we had five turbines working, generating 440mw.
“But we had a fire incident on the plant and two turbines had to be shut down for now. As at February 2016, we were generating 390mw.
“However, by May this year, we plan to generate 490mw. Everything is on course to achieving this.”
He said the company would be bringing in international experts to look into the possibility of having one or more turbine added to the plant to boost power generation.
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