The Minister of Power, Mr Adebayo Adelabu, says the Federal Government plans to focus on an alternate source of generation to improve power supply.
Speaking in Abuja on Wednesday while interacting with power correspondents, Adelabu said that the plan was to de-emphasise the national grid and focus on distributed power.
According to him, power can be generated and delivered directly to consumers without passing through the national grid. He added that the best way to achieve this is by exploring alternate sources of generation.
“We want to use small hydros, and we have small dams that can generate between 500 kilowatts down to five megawatts. So, we want to focus on that to generate power for identified locations embedded in the distribution network without passing through the transmission network because the capacity and stability of our transmission is still constrained,” he said.
The minister said that the government was also looking at solar energy, as many investors have offered to invest in it.
Adelabu said that many of these investors were asking the government to provide them with a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) and connect it to the grid.
“No, it won’t happen now. Whoever wants to invest in solar power must identify who the off-takers are; our focus should be on off-grid power generation.
“We have proposals for offshore wind power in Nigeria, as we have the potential for this because we are a coastal country. We can have wind fans that provide us with very clean power.
“That is what we want to do, which is why we concentrate on continuously improving the grid and expanding its capacity. We don’t want to wait; we want to generate power and distribute it to our people,” he said.
Adelabu said he has also ordered an investigation into the extension of the licenses of electricity distribution companies, otherwise known as DisCos, by five years.
