Rural electrification: Why Nigeria needs to end grid extension to remote and rural areas (2)

With respect to maintenance, it is good to know that with the exception of a few companies and maybe highbrow residential estates, transformers are rarely serviced in Nigeria. In fact it’s hard to hear of public transformers being serviced. The maintenance culture is reactive, that is; work-till-crash. Such failures could easily have been avoided in some cases with regular routine servicing and proper loading (balance and sizing). Although I understand some community leaders in connivance with unscrupulous local power authority technicians do make avaricious pecuniary gains from such failures and repairs cycles. With good maintenance, choice, and loading of local distribution transformers, the losses will be considerably minimized being that there are many of them. Typically between 40% to 50% of energy losses in the entire grid are attributable to transformers. With the lack of maintenance of our local transformers due to poor facility maintenance culture, the overall losses on the grid arising from transformers are definitely more than 50%.

From the foregoing and subsequent publications, the need to discontinue the extension of grid electricity to rural and remote communities of Nigeria or if possible disconnect them for more viable renewable energy resources will be the best long term decision to make with respect to national electrification coverage and sustainable socio-economic development being that the ultimate global energy plan for the far future in order to zero carbon emission and enhance healthy ecological balance are  envisaged at 100% renewable energy .

As a little diversion from this topic, the idea of nuclear energy production given credence to by the recent attendance of the UN nuclear energy summit by President Mohammadu Buhari sounds both cute and dreadful for Nigeria to explore. Yes, Nigeria has rich deposits of the radioactive uranium (U-238 isotope) which usually exist at around 3% of an entire deposit in natural existence and many riverine areas suitable for nuclear power plant location among other friendly environmental conditions. Is it advisable for Nigeria to embark on nuclear power production? The answer is a faint yes and a bigger no! This is because the cost of securing nuclear stations from terrorists and other possible sabotage, which could spell doom for entire neighbourhoods or even the nation, are colossal. Acquiring a nuclear power production technology equally endows one with the knowledge of nuclear weaponry, which on its own places a relatively politically weak and rising nation like Nigeria in global UN security spotlight not mentioning the security interferences and the many political conundrums involved. The poor maintenance culture and administrative encumbrances in Nigeria are common knowledge and should such sloppy attitudes be reflected in a nuclear power station, which is quite likely, the nation will pay dearly for it. Our disaster preparedness is nothing to write home about at the moment putting national pride aside. Even Germany plans to close down all its existing nuclear plants by 2022 and replace same with wind turbines and other renewable energy sources. As at 2012, Denmark generates 75% of its power from wind. Even the United States of America have not built any nuclear station for over 35 years now. France is the only wholesale champion of nuclear energy production in Europe at the moment and this is so due to their deep early involvement in it. The safety issues and probability factors in building nuclear stations are best approached with a Murphy’s Law mindset; the worst happening at the worst possible time. The mistake of others must be our primary action determinants. Looking back and around, nuclear energy for power in advanced thinking is on its way to being suspended pending improvement in knowledge especially regarding nuclear waste disposal/disintegration and basic safety challenges.

However, a few (say 3 or 4) pilot micro projects in nuclear energy production as currently in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in order to enhance local knowledge advancement and research in atomic energy will be a great idea. Most of the financial resources being planned for base load nuclear power stations should be channelled to renewable energy production especially wind, solar, and micro-hydro for which Nigeria has great potentials begging to be tapped. The world is moving forward and we cannot afford to slide back.

Christian Okwori