By Chineme Okafor in Abuja
Barring any unforeseen developments, the 450 megawatts (MW) Azura-Edo independent power plant currently being built by Azura Power Holdings and its co-shareholders would come on stream and begin to generate that amount of electricity into Nigeria’s national grid by the first week of May 2018, its Managing Director, Dr. David Ladipo, has disclosed.
Ladipo stated during a tour of the project site by a team of project monitoring officials from the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc (NBET) on Tuesday in Benin, that the planned commissioning of the plant’s operations and generation of its electricity into the grid would be achieved almost eight months ahead of the construction timeline it reached with NBET in its Power Purchase Agreement (PPA).
He said already, relevant works required to get the plant ready for the May 2018 commissioning are at advance stages and that its first fires would be achieved in December 2017.
According to him, the eight months cutback in project completion timeline was made possible because it competitively procured the best contractors for the job, in addition to instituting a transparent management of work schedules on the project which he noted its contractors started work on in January 2016.
“We expect to come on stream in May 2018, and that is nearly eight months ahead of the completion timeline we agreed with the NBET. We will achieve our first fire in December, and then by May, we would be on the grid,” said Ladipo.
Details later…
