The Federal Government has stepped up efforts at boosting electricity supply in Ekiti State with the delivery of equipment and supplies and accessories for two 132/33KV stations along with transmission lines to the State.
Receiving the equipment on behalf of Transmission Corporation of Nigeria (TCN) on Saturday at the Omisanjana 132/33Kv station in Ado-Ekiti, the State Commissioner for Infrastructure and Public Utilities, Prof. Bolaji Aluko – accompanied by Ekiti TCN General Manager Engr. Victor Famoroti – said the substations will be installed in Ilupeju Ekiti and Ijesa Isu Ekiti to improve transmission of bulk power supply to the North and other senatorial districts of the state, with a switching station at Ikere.
While lauding the Federal Government and Ekiti State Governor, Mr Biodun Oyebanji for fast-tracking the two substations projects, the Commissioner said the additional substations, which are aimed at revolutionizing Ekiti state power sector, will serve as 240MVA total addition (four new transforners of 60MVA each) to the 140MVA-3-transforrners Omisanjana substation in Ado-Ekiti.
He added that the project will be completed before the end of the year.
According to Prof Aluko, “Those two stations will be like the Omisanjana station where we are standing right now. This project has been going on for almost three years and increasingly more of the equipment has come in. About four or five months ago, a set of trucks like this consignment came in. They were delivered at Ijesa Isu, Ikere and Ilupeju, but this is the largest group that has come in now, 15 trucks of various kinds of equipment, poles, wires, transformers.
“All of these things are in these trucks and containers, to be offloaded in the next few days.
“You know, this work takes a while, I’m sure it will still take about six months for full installation, you know, you do installation, poles installation, wiring, you do testing, and so on. We are hopeful that by the end of this year, it will be ready, we’ve been waiting for three years, and so, we can still wait till the end of the year.”
While commending Governor Oyebanji for the installation of Independent Power Project (IPP) in the state as the only power generating station in the state, Prof. Aluko noted “Until we had our IPP in the state, we had no generation plant in the state, generation of power itself is a problem in the state, but we now have an IPP.
“Aside of these IPP generation, we’ve been depending on the national grid lines. So Omisanjana is the only power station that admits 132 kV and radiates 33 kV. The two additional lines with all these equipment that we have will allow us to have two additional stations like Omisanjana in the state, so that 33 kV lines can radiate from more stations in the state and further boost electricity supply to more areas.
“This stations will bring quality electricity nearer to the people, one thing about electricity is that the farther it is from where it comes in to where it is consumed, the more it loses power potency. So, when you have more stations like this in more parts of the state, the electricity will get to more towns with greater power than just one that we have in Omisanjana going to all parts of the state. That’s why this is extremely important to us.
“Furthermore, it will increase the capacity of the grid lines in Ekiti state to accept more power so that there will be no excuses from maybe the national grid or from new generation plants that we do not have enough lines to accept the power that they are going to provide”, the Commissioner stated