Ejiofor Alike
Eko Electricity Distribution Company has announced that beginning from today there will be power rationing in Lekki, Ikoyi, Victoria Island and some parts of Ajah, all in Lagos Island, for one month.
The company’s General Manager in charge of Corporate Communications, Mr. Godwin Idemudia, said the power rationing was to enable the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) o upgrade both Line 1 and Line 2 of Ajah-Alagbon Transmission Line from 132kv to 330kv.
According to him, during the upgrade operation, which will last for three or four weeks, the Lekki Transmission Injection Sub-station, which feeds most of the areas to be affected by the power rationing, will be completely shut down.
In order to ensure that the areas are not completely out of supply for the duration of the upgrade operation, Idemudia said “alternative power supply arrangement would be made through back-feeding operation to the areas from Alagbon Transmission Injection Sub-station, via Ijora.”
While appealing to customers to show understanding and bear with the situation during the period of the facility upgrade, Idemudia further stated that all efforts would be made to ensure equitable distribution of available power to all customers.
He also assured customers that by the time the upgrade work is completed, it will result in tremendous improvement in power supply to all customers in the area.
Investigations revealed that the company’s inability to service the customers around Lekki, Aja, Ikoyi and Victoria Island areas is as a result of the transmission challenges at Alagbon.
THISDAY gathered that Alagbon has a capacity of 132MVA but Eko has a load capacity of 380MVA.
To address this transmission challenge, the company had planned to invest N1.7 billion to partner TCN to ensure that power is evacuated to Victoria Island, Ikoyi and parts of Lekki.
TCN has suffered funding challenges, thus making it increasingly difficult for the company to rehabilitate the weak transmission network nationwide.
To help address the funding challenges, the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), operators of the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) had also planned to reinvest $1.5 billion from the sale of the power assets under the NIPP to revamp the transmission infrastructure.
However, this plan was constrained by inadequate gas supply, which stalled the privatisation of the NIPP.
