By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Management of Kaduna Electric has taken strong exception to the recent newspaper report which suggested that the company was rejecting electricity allocated to it from the National Control Centre (NCC).
In a press statement issued by its Head of Corporate Communication, Mr AbdulAzzez Abdullahi, Kaduna Electric maintained that contrary to the newspaper report, it has a “maximum demand of about 500MW as verified during the stress test conducted by the company in November, 2015”.
Mr Abdullahi attributed the discrepancy between the load allocation from the National Control Centre and the load taken by the company to system “instability and capacity limitation of Transmission Company of Nigeria’s infrastructures.”
According to him, TCN substations in Birnin Kebbi, Talatan Mafara, Gusau and Kaduna as well as some transmission lines within the company’s franchise area are either aged or grossly over loaded to guarantee full load.
“It is practically impossible for our Company to strictly adhere to load allocation of the NCC due to auto under frequency relay operations of the TCN on the Kaduna town 2 132KV line,” he contended.
He argued that the situation was further compounded by the frequency and voltage control limitation operations the company is subjected to by the intermittent instruction of the TCN.
He appealed to the authority concern to, as a matter urgency, upgrade the 330/132KV, 90MVA transformer T1 in Birnin Kebbi transmission works Centre to 150MVA to enable the Company improve power supply to Sokoto and parts of Zamfara States.
The firm’s spokesman also called for the upgrading of the transformers in Gusau and Kaduna and rehabilitation of the Funtua-Gusau 132Kv line accordingly.
Adedapo Adesanya