The Aba Power Project is expected to be inaugurated later this year as the last of the three Geometric Power Company’s thermal turbines sent to Houston, Texas, in the United States for periodic retrofitting has been brought back to Nigeria.
Geometric Power Aba Limited (GPAL) said on Monday that two of the three turbines sent out in December 2019, to the United States for a comprehensive check at the plant of General Electric (GE), the world’s biggest electricity equipment manufacturing group in the world, have already been reinstalled at the plant.
The power facility is located at Osisioma Industrial Layout in Aba, Abia State. According to the company, the third turbine is now on its way to the plant.
Each of the three natural gas-fired turbines generates 47 megawatts, bringing the total capacity of electricity which can be generated at the Aba Power Project to 141MW, though the plant is licensed to produce 181MW.
“If the demand for electricity grows beyond the current installed capacity of 141MW, we will just acquire one more 47MW turbine, which will bring our generation to 181MW,” Mr. Ben Caven, Managing Director of Geometric Power Aba Limited (GPAL) said.
Though the three GE turbines have not been used to generate electricity since they were installed the first time in 2012 following a dispute with the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC), which has been resolved, Caven stated that Geometric Power found it necessary to return them to the manufacturer for review, “because it is in consonance with the best international engineering practice.”
Caven, who was a former Executive Director of the defunct National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), further disclosed that Geometric Power, “is lucky to have sent out our three turbines when it did in December 2019, otherwise the retrofitting would have been delayed for long on account of COVID-19, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a pandemic in March 2020.”
