President Bola Tinubu will today commission Nigeria’s only integrated power project, the $800 million Geometric Power Aba Limited (GPAL) in Osisioma Ngwa Local Government Area (LGA), Abia State.
GPAL is licensed to produce 188 Megawatts (MW) and it is currently Nigeria’s only integrated power project, as it has its own embedded power plant, which enables it to generate and distribute its own power, separating it from other electricity companies that either generate or distribute electric power, as none can generate and distribute power as it would.
It was gathered that the electricity generation company in the Geometric Power Group (GP) is Geometric Power Aba Ltd, (GPAL), while the distribution company is Aba Power Limited Electrical (APLE), which services nine out of the seventeen local government areas in Abia State.
These nine LGAs are: Aba South, Aba North, Osisioma Ngwa, Obingwa, Ugwunagbo, Ukwa East, Ukwa West, Isiala-Ngwa South and Isiala-Ngwa North collectively make up the Aba Ring-fenced Area where GPAL in charge of producing and distributing electricity.
Addressing newsmen during a news conference, the Chairman of the company, Professor Barth Nnaji said that GPAL has invested almost $800 million in the Integrated Power Project, making it by far the largest single investment in the Southeast geopolitical zone of Nigeria.
He explained that so far, GP has installed three turbines purchased from General Electric (GE) of the United States, the oldest and largest electricity equipment manufacturing company in the world, with each producing 47MW to enable it to achieve the 188MW it was licensed to produce when the fourth is installed.
Nnaji, however, explained that the fourth turbine will be installed when the demand for power increases substantially, stressing that by their records, Aba cannot immediately consume all of the 141MW coming from three turbines, hence the capacity will be scaled up to 188MW when the consumption increases.
The Geometric Power Chairman also specifically said that the Mon- day commissioning of the entire power project by President Bola Tinubu will not automatically guarantee 24-hour electricity to the city of Aba, but will rather trigger the process of achieving steady power supply, stressing that the launching of the turbines will be done in phases.
He however explained that the mission of achieving a steady power supply to Aba is already accomplished as the plan on the ground is to ensure that the date gap between the usage of the first turbine which will start producing 47MW from Monday and the usage of the second turbine will not exceed three weeks’ interval.
“The commissioning of the turbines will be staggered. They would be commissioned one by one. The first turbine will increase the power supply to the Aba Ring-fence Area by 47MW, which is almost double the current 25MW supply from the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC).
“When the first turbine is commissioned, it will be monitored closely. Once the performance is considered satisfactory, the second turbine will be commissioned. The same process will be followed in commissioning the third turbine,” Nnaji said.