By Kingsley Okoye
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has completed the reinforcement of Hadejia 132/33KV substation in Jigawa with an additional 60 MVA power transformer to improve power supply in the country.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that TCN had received approval from the Federal Government to begin a pilot funding scheme of $200 million for the refurbishing of its existing lines and substations in the country.
According to TCN, the approved funding scheme is designed to complement Federal Government’s funding of the 127 transmission projects in the country
Mrs Seun Olagunju, TCN’s General Manager, Public Affairs, in a statement on Monday in Abuja said that the completion of the job had increased the capacity of the station with 48 megawatts to connect three important transmission feeders.
According to her the three feeders include the Nguru feeder in Yobe state, Kafin Hausa and Gumel Emirates in Jigawa state.
Olagunju said that prior to the reinforcement, the substation in Hadejia had two old power transformers of 15MVA and 7.5MVA capacity that were installed in 1991 and 2003 respectively.
She said that the effective combined capacity of the two old transformers was only 18 MW, adding that their limited capacity created significant overload of the transformers.
This, Olaggunju said had resulted to poor supply quality and consistent load shedding in the area.
She said that the completion of the project would also help Kano electricity Distribution Company to relieve the old transformers by transferring some connections to the new transformer.
This, she said would ultimately help increase the load and provide more reliable power supply.
”As expected , the reinforcement of this station will go a long way in improving the electricity supply and socio-economic well being of approximately 1.5 million people living in parts of Yobe and Jigawa states,’’she said.
Olagunju further said that with the support of Ministries of Finance and Power, TCN was about to secure funding from one of the Multilateral Development Bank to finance the reconstruction of the existing Kaduna to Kano 330KV single circuit transmission line. (NAN)
