Mr Oladele Amoda, Chief Executive Officer, Eko Electricity Distribution Company Plc (EKEDCP), on Thursday said that the company had recorded major improvement in its incremental power initiatives.
Amoda said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
‘’In a deliberate effort toward improving our services, we have embarked on steady incremental power initiatives and have largely reduced load shedding within the network,” he said.
The chief executive officer, however, said there were some challenges that needed to be addressed.
“Finance is a major constraint and we have been raising funds from commercial banks to execute key infrastructure projects.’’
The EKEDCP boss appealed to government to urgently consider the review of the country’s electricity tariff, adding that the current tariff structure was not cost reflective and not investor friendly.
Amoda said that a cost reflective and structured tariff would boost the appetite of investors to invest in the country’s power project.
He said two firms were close to completing power projects in Ijora and Apapa under the embedded power initiative, but noted that 10 similar projects were strand because investors were not comfortable with their tariff structure.
“We need to address tariff to entice investors because they have expressed concern over recovery as the present tariff structure is not encouraging.”
He also expressed concern over infrastructure gap in the industry, a development he said largely affected its performance.
The chief executive officer said nevertheless, the company had made progress in boosting several substations in Surulere, Orile, Keffi and Akoka to provide supply to its customers in Lagos State.
He revealed that ”only one line out of two that evacuates electricity from Egbin power station down to its network is functional.”
Amoda expressed concern that in case of infraction, the area would slip into darkness.
NAN reports that the infrastructure constraint has also forced Discos to reject electricity load as reports indicated that from Aug. 13 to Aug. 20, 2017, the discos rejected an average of 1,000MW of power.
Information released by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) indicated that in spite having a national peak demand of 19,100MW, power generation was about 3,264MW on Sept. 7, 2017.
The report said that though Nigeria had the capacity to generate 11,165.40MW, TCN had continued to transmit below its current capability of 7,000MW. (NAN)