Aba Power Ltd, a subsidiary of Geometric Power, will start to supply power from one of its three turbines to consumers in the Aba Ring-fenced Area this weekend rather than in two weeks as originally scheduled.
The company had scheduled supplies to commercial customers 13 days after commissioning in line with technical protocols, but, according to sources, its chairman, Professor Bart Nnaji who is a former Minister of Power, has directed the utility’s engineers to provide “power to the people without fail this weekend”.
The Geometric Power 188 Megawatt thermal plant and the Aba Power company to distribute electricity to nine of the 17 local government areas in Abia State were commissioned last Monday by Vice President Kassim Shettima on behalf of President Bola Tinubu in the Osisioma Industrial Layout in Aba, Abia, State, 24 hours after the first turbine was turned on.
“Non-critical technical procedures must be eliminated”, the Geometric Power founder told his team of local and foreign engineers, according to three highly placed officials who do not want their names because they were not authorised to speak to the media on this matter.
Officials of the National Control Centre (NCC) at Oshogbo in Osun State were billed to inspect the Geometric Power facility next week as one of the technical requirements, but they will now arrive this week, according to the sources who disclosed that “Nnaji, a globally recognized engineering professor, is pulling all the strings and using his network”.
When one of Geometric Power’s three turbines built by General Electric of the United States goes into commercial operations this weekend, it will supply 47MW, which is almost double the 25MW the Aba Metropolis and the environs currently receive from the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) through the national grid, explained Cliff Eneh, an energy consultant in Lagos who used to be a senior engineer with the National Power Authority (NEPA) after working for the Texas Power and Light Company in the United States.
The second turbine, said Engr Eneh, “will increase power supply to the Aba Ring-fenced Area to 94MW, “thereby meeting Aba energy requirements for now and stabilising power supply to the area.
“Nigeria needs a number of generation and distribution firms with state-of-the-art facilities like Geometric Power, which is an integrated electricity group because it has both generating and distributing subsidiaries”.
Neimeth Pharmaceuticals plc based in Lagos is one of the big firms which has announced the intention to relocate their manufacturing plants to Aba when electricity improves substantially in the industrial city.
Poor power supply, which leads to enormous and costly self -generation, accounts for substantial percentage of high production cost in Nigeria.
Power Minister Adebayo Adelabu disclosed at the commissioning of Geometric Power facilities on Monday that the Federal Government would be studying the performance of the Geometric Power group closely with a view to making it a business model for the development of the beleaguered Nigerian power sector.