Rural electrification: Why Nigeria needs to end grid extension to remote and rural areas (1)

The effect of extending grid electricity to under populated rural and remote towns, villages, and hinterlands may sound nice with all good intents but the sad truth is that it has more negative techno-economic than positive impact on the overall national grid connection. Yes, everyone takes pride in seeing grid electricity connected to his or her village. As such politicians and influential government functionaries consider the extension of grid electrification to their villages as primary duty to the people no matter how under populated or remotely distant such places are urban areas. The intention to bring light to a people and stir the growth and advancement of their health and socioeconomic life is noble and should be praised and championed by all reasonable men in position to do so but under what circumstances and at what cost?

The problems of grid electricity production in Nigeria are as much transmission-distribution based as they are on generation. This means the losses incurred in the processes of electricity transmission and distribution right from the point of generation in Egbin or Kainji, for example through the grid via sub stations and high tension lines are so high that about a whopping 40% are lost along the lines due to very inefficient transmission-distribution lines and components, poor maintenance, obsolescence, vandalization, and poor configurations among others which also worsen with age. In the United States for example, such transmission losses are less than 1% and with single digits in most fast developing worlds.

Every mile of grid extension adds to the losses in the overall grid electricity. In fact, researches show that between 0.005 and 0.013% of generated electrical energy are lost by the grid per mile on average. The volume of losses are primarily contributed by transmission and distribution cables, transformers, other transmission and distribution components, and inefficient appliances aside leakages from live accidental or vandalized line failures etc. Now, considering also the cost of extending grid lines per mile which also varies with topography and local constraints but typically estimated at an average of $1.5million per mile, it becomes clear that such grid extension though of good intention are not in the overall interest of the nation nor makes economic sense. This leaves us to rethink alternative energy sources in place of grid extension for remote locations and isolated settlements with less than a population of say 1000 people being that every part of Nigeria is richly endowed with at least one or more  viable renewable energy resource. The onus is for such alternative potentials to be effectively exploited for local usage in these remote and under populated locations while the grid is dedicated primarily to supplying urban areas and industries. Deploying massive and mini solar and wind energy farms will avoid or minimize the issues of losing enormous energy in the grid lines being that the distance between sources and loads are quite negligible even with the inclusion of Feed-in-Tariff components.

Aside evading the grid losses via isolated captive and distributed generation alternative power plants, there is need to reevaluate the grid performance itself because at the end of the day parts or excesses of these off-grid energies may need to be fed (sold) to the grid by virtue of Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) system, as such the efficiency and capacity of the grid has to be stepped up. The first step to solving problems of shortage is always by cutting down losses and wastage before considering more supplies.

Next the capacity of the grid has to be bolstered in order to increase its energy carrying capacity. As it stands, the grid capacity is put at around 7,100MW which is even a far cry from what is needed to drive Africa’s largest economy. This implies the replacement of vital transmission and distribution components that are obsolete with modern high efficient, lighter, maintenance friendly, and high efficiency ones. Components like RMU, transformers, and switchyard equipment, and cable sizing, among others are part of the little things that add up to the colossus loss monster. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

With respect to transformers, especially the distribution transformers, most of those used for public power distributions are very inefficient; though cheaper, they waste lots of power. It pays in the long run to use more expensive but highly efficient and maintenance friendly transformers than the regular wasteful and cheaper ones. Generally, the graphite cooled transformers are preferable to the oil cooled types among other considerations for optimal cost effective performance.

Christian Okwori