The Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, on Thursday disclosed that it recorded new national peak electricity transmission capacity of 5,155.9 Mega Watt, MW, on December 8.

The Interim Managing Director of TCN, Usman Gur-Mohammed, made the disclosure at an interaction with journalists in Abuja.

Mr. Gur-Mohammed said the new record exceeded previous national peak record of 5,074.70 recorded on February 2.

He said the nation’s average peak load capacity at the beginning of the year was about 4,000 MW.

He added that the Transmission Rehabilitation and Expansion Programme (TREP) which sought to decentralise significant aspects of project implementation to regions was designed to further increase the national peak transmission capacity.

He said TREP had attracted financing for several projects from donor agencies, adding that the completion of the projects would result in expansion of the grid transmission capacity to at least 20,000MW in four years time.

He also revealed that TCN engineers had been involved in installation of transformers at substations in the country.

The TCN interim boss explained that installations were accomplished at less than 10 per cent of the cost hitherto paid to contractors over the years.

According to him, the company successfully installed 10 transformers in Bauchi, Funtua, Ejigbo, Ajah, Gombe, Aba, Umuahia, Auchi, Damboa and Zaria, saying that installations by TCN engineers saved several millions of Naira.

He also revealed that TCN had resolved several challenging and slow implementing contracts within the year.

The contracts, according to him, include the Kukwaba subsation, Katsina-Daura line, Yawuri-Kafanchan, Mbalano-Ohafia-Umuahia, Nnewi-Onitsha and Maiduguri substations.

He said the completion of some ongoing projects would add about 1,000MW transmission capacity to the grid before January 31, 2018.

Mr. Gur-Mohammed also said that within the year, TCN entered into collaboration with several partners to reposition the company for better service delivery.

According to him, some of the collaborations include the Agip and NNPC joint venture in respect of towers 94 and 98 on Okpai-Onitisha DC line.

He noted that TCN was also collaborating with government of Japan on development of capacitor banks in Apo and Keffi substations and rehabilitation of Apapa, Akangba, and Isolo substations.

He said discussions were ongoing with Japan Government to rehabilitate Ikeja West and Ota substations.

He added that the European Union (EU) had also pledged to provide 25 million Euros grant to support TCN on solar Independent Power Plant (IPP) evaluation.

(NAN)