The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has disclosed that electricity generation in the country rose from 3,500 megawatts to 4,800 megawatts in April.
Adelabu stated this on Thursday when he was in Ajah, Lagos State to launch a 63MVA, 132/33kV mobile substation installed under Phase 1 of the Presidential Power Initiative by the FGN Power Company in collaboration with Siemens Energy.
Speaking at the event, Adelabu disclosed that the power generation increased from 4,200MW in the past few days following the operation of the Zungeru hydroelectric power plant.
Zungeru power plant is a major infrastructure project with the capacity to generate 700MW, making it the second-largest hydroelectric plant in Nigeria, behind the Kainji Dam.
Located in the Kaduna River, near the town of Zungeru in Niger State, the plant is to generate 2.64 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, meeting nearly 10 per cent of Nigeria’s domestic energy needs.
“Let me mention that we have started seeing improvements in our generation output. In the past few days, the output has increased from 4,200MW to 4,800MW. What we experienced in February and some parts of March is not desirable when we had very low generation.
“I just came back from a meeting this morning, where how to make efforts to pay down on our debts to the gencos and the gas companies was discussed.
“We have made significant progress which I believe will encourage generating companies to ramp up their outputs as we are targeting 6,000MW before the end of the year.
“What led to the increase in the past few days was the commencement of the operation of Zungeru hydroelectric power plant that just added 625MW to the national grid,” he said.
