Azura power comes online seven months ahead of schedule

Nigeria’s quest for incremental power supply received a boost earlier today as Azura Power’s first turbine was synchronized to the national grid and began producing electricity for distribution across the country seven months ahead of schedule.

Azura is set to become the first large scale project to be delivered in budget and ahead of deadline and could ramp Nigeria’s peak generation from 5,155MW to above 5,500MW.

Edu Okeke, deputy managing director, of Azura expressed his pleasure that the commissioning process will start before Christmas: “This festive season is one of the peak periods for electricity consumption in Nigeria and it’s a source of real pride for Azura that we were able to bring our first turbine onto the Grid before Christmas Day.”

This marks the beginning of a four-month period of intensive commissioning of the 459MW Azura-Edo IPP located in Benin City, Edo State. The plant is comprised of three Siemens turbines, each of which is capable of producing 153MW.

The first turbine was synchronized to the national grid today and will undergo a battery of tests over the coming five weeks. Tests on the second turbine will begin at the end of January 2018, with the tests on the third turbine commencing at the beginning of March 2018. The commissioning process will then conclude at the end of April 2018 when the plant is scheduled to reach full commercial operations.

The project, whose construction began in January 2016 was anticipated to reach completion in December 2018. But with the vast bulk of the work already completed, the project is currently more than 7 months ahead of schedule. It has also become a standard-bearer for good health and safety practices, having clocked up more than 4 million man-hours of work without a single lost-time injury.

Azura project has become a case study of what the electricity value chain was meant to be. Siemens and Julius Berger built the plant under the terms of the EPC Contract. The gas that was used to generate today’s electricity was supplied by Seplat PLC and the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company in accordance with the Gas Supply & Purchase Agreement.

The Nigerian Gas Company transported the gas to the site in line with the Gas Transportation Agreement. The electrons generated were then transmitted across the country’s high voltage network by TCN per the Grid Connection Agreement. These same electrons were then bought by NBET under the terms of the Power Purchase Agreement and sold to the eleven distribution companies (“Discos”) under the Vesting Contracts between NBET and the Discos.

The debt financing for the $900m Azura power plant project is provided by a consortium of 15 banks from 9 different countries, including most of the European development finance institutions. The Azura-Edo IPP is also the first Nigerian power project to benefit from both the World Bank’s “Partial Risk Guarantee” structure and the political risk insurance supplied by the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency.