The Federal Government has commenced work on the Abuja Feeding Scheme project, which comprises the construction of two transmission lines and five substations in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
Usman Gur Mohammed, managing director/CEO, Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), said the transmission scheme, when completed, would add 1,380MVA transformer capacity, equivalent to 624 megawatts (mw) to the grid.
Mohammed also confirmed that the agency, with the assistance of the Federal Government, had received a credit from Agence Francaise de Development (AFD) to reinforce the high-voltage transmission ring around Abuja.
Mohammed gave the information on Thursday in Abuja at the ground-breaking ceremony of the Abuja Feeding Scheme performed by the permanent secretary, Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, Louis Edozien, to signal the official commencement of the construction work on the project.
He noted that Abuja currently had only two 330KV substations and five 132KV substations.
According to Mohammed, “We are adding additional two 330/132/34KV substations and additional three 132/33KV substations in the FCT.”
He further announced that the increase in transmission capacity would improve power supply within Abuja and its environs as well as positively impact the socio-economic wellbeing of the people.
He noted that the Abuja feeding scheme was one of the projects under the Transmission Rehabilitation and Extension Programme (TREP) designed to tackle issues of transmission nationwide, and also in specific locations.
He explained that under the TREP project, the TCN had been able to commission several transmission substations and installed over 30 power transformers across the country and also achieved a frequency Control within 49.8-50.2 in the last one year.
“By June this year we should be able to achieve frequency Control that’s the best in entire West Africa,” he assured.
He added: “We have recovered 730 containers out of 800 containers that were stranded in the port, some of them were there for over 15 years, some of them were actually auctioned, only two were lost, 798 are intact and we are removing them from the port.”
Further, Mohammed explained that the bidding process for the Abuja Feeding Scheme was transparent and the TCN has a savings of about $25 million from the Project.
“We had 10 qualified contractors for each of the six slots, and each of the six slots the least publicly announced price became the least evaluated bidder. We have never had this kind of achievement in our history,” he noted.
The Abuja Feeding scheme is expected to last for 18 to 24 months.
