TCN raises N565bn to achieve 20,000MW in four years

Usman Mohammed, managing director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), says N565.2bn has been raised to achieve 20,000 megawatts (MW) in the next four years.

Mohammed disclosed this in Abuja on Tuesday at a workshop with stakeholders in the electricity industry.

The workshop was organised by TCN to review its plan to procure and install new supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and electricity management system (EMS) for the national grid.

He said the fund was sourced from the World Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), African Development Bank (AfDB), French Development Agency and other international financiers for its Transmission Rehabilitation and Expansion Programme (TREP).

The TREP, according to him, was initiated and approved by the federal government to enable the TCN steadily grow, stabilise and modernise Nigeria’s transmission network so it can take more electricity from generation companies (Gencos) to distribution networks.

“We established the Transmission Rehabilitation and Expansion Programme (TREP) that seeks to expand and stabilise the grid, and provide necessary flexibility and redundancies consistent with N-1 reliability criteria,” he said.

“The objective of the TREP also is to expand the grid to about 20,000 megawatts in the next three to four years, this being done through the implementation of the TREP.

“I wish to tell you that the TREP has so far been able raise $1.57 billion from multilateral and bilateral donors. And, this is coming from the World Bank, African Development Bank (AfDB), JICA, and French Development Agency.

“Discussion is ongoing also to raise more funds in the course of the implementation of this programme.”

Mohammed also disclosed that the transmission wheeling capacity had risen to 7,124MW from 5,000MW and that it has also reached a stable frequency of 49.5 Hertz (Hz) and 50.5Hz – which had not been attained in the past 20 years.