Peavy attributed the recent ramp-up of Egbin’s capacity to continuous investment and revamp of the plant by its new owners, Sahara Power Group and the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO).
In a related development, President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday said his government had already identified the critical problems in Nigeria’s power sector and was taking appropriate actions to address them.
Peavey in a statement said when the new owners took over in November 2013, generation at Egbin averaged 500 megawatts due to the dismal state of its six units, with only two of the six units operational at the plant’s lowest point.
According to him, the last time the power plant hit the 1,000MW mark was eight years ago, adding that this peak lasted for less than two hours.
He said the transformation in Egbin commenced after its acquisition by Kepco Energy Resource Limited (KERL), in collaboration with its technical partners, Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO).
“Through the injection of close to N50 billion in new capital into Egbin post privatisation, the Sahara Power/KEPCO partnership has brought to the power plant, an unprecedented level of innovation, professionalism, human capital development and continuing investment in new technology. The control room panels, installed at the plant’s inception have been removed and upgraded to state of the art digital panels. The highlight of the main plant rehabilitation occurred in the first quarter of 2015, when the company successfully rehabilitated ST Unit 6, bringing an additional 220MW to the national grid and restoring the power plant to its installed capacity of 1320MW,” Peavy explained.
With these developments, Peavy said the plant was equipped to generate power at its installed 1,320MW capacity, while the new owners was exploring expansion in power generation to hit 2, 670 megawatts, subject to availability of gas, additional transmission capacity and improved demand for power.
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