The Minister of Power, Mr Adebayo Adelabu, on Wednesday announced the Federal Government’s plan to explore alternate power sources to improve power supply.
Adelabu, who disclosed this while interacting with power correspondents in Abuja, said the plan was to reduce overdependence on the national grid and distribute power.
He stressed that it was possible for power to be generated and gotten to consumers without passing through the national grid, however it will only be feasible through alternate source of generation.
“We want to use small hydropower; we have small dams that can generate between 500 kilowatts down to five megawatts.
“So, we want to focus on that to generate power to identified locations embedded in the distribution network without passing through the transmission network because the capacity and stability of our transmission are still constrained, ‘’ he said.
The minister stated that a viable option, the government was looking into is solar energy, because there are a lot of investors who have given the country offers to invest in it.
According to Adelabu, a lot of the investors were asking the government to give them Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) and evacuate it to the grid, a request they were not ready to grant.
He said, “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; we have potential for this because we are a coastal country. We can have wind fans that give us 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.”
