SIR: The piece published on page 11 of The Nation of Wednesday, October 28, on the above subject refers. The author did not show understanding of effective and efficient decision-making. He indicated three factors that should direct decisions. One was that the total power generation fell from 3,776.5 to 3,474.5 MW on Sunday. Second was that 11 out of 27 generating plants were idle, and third was that “It is understandable that we operate on agreements which bring in regular payments and allow us unfettered territorial access to River Niger and other continental Rivers that we share with our neighbours”.
By virtue of the third reason, it is wrong to break the agreement and attend to our own need. So, it is NOT unreasonable to give priority to the electricity needs of other countries over and above the national need. Government should not compromise an existing agreement, no matter the cost to us. Africa looks up to us in spite of our constraints.
Asset reliability management professionals are not surprised that 11 plants out of 27 were idle. The problem is lack of adequate technical know-how, caused by the dearth of experienced engineers. Rotating equipment maintenance is a challenging task globally. Those involved must follow the improvement trends from 1945 to date. In order to meet local electricity demand without compromising commitments to our neighbouring countries, we strongly recommend that the federal government through the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) change the method of oversight on the operators by driving them to explore and exploit engineered strategies that optimize costs. This would be achieved through improved oversight on the generating and distribution companies (GenCos/DisCos). Government should invite professionals to review the technical template that was used to qualify them originally.
A professional colleague told a story of how the old National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) requested them to inspect the plants and recommend solutions. Their team discovered the plants only operated at 25% of installed capabilities because the machines were often idle. Example was that the machines in Alaojii were designed to be powered with both steam and gas. But the project did not install the steam system; the plants remained idle when there was insufficient gas supply from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). A mechanical engineer in-charge of the facility did not know the type and quantity of lubricating oil in the machines. Other plants in Sapele and Ughelli had similar problems in addition to poor spare parts inventory management. They cannibalized machines to maintain another.
Another friend also told us how they visited Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) plants after former President Jonathan unbundled them into private investor companies in 2013. The situation did not change – not meeting business objectives. The United States had similar experience in the late 1960s when they recorded high rate of accidents in the aviation and nuclear power plant industries. A body was established with rigorous processes to evaluate and qualify applications into the businesses. One stringent requirement was presentation of a documented maintenance procedure to be scrutinized by experts before issuing operating licenses. Today airlines and nuclear power stations operate at 99.9% reliability at huge profits to the stakeholders. Engineering has evolved to the point of running facilities without shutting equipment down to do-not-fail maintenance. NERC should procure the services of experts to re-examine the capabilities of present operators of our industrial facilities to drive improvements.
Idle plants will remain with us with attendant high operating costs because the business is capital intensive. Increasing tariff is not an answer. An example of an improvement strategy is effective and efficient maintenance planning and scheduling which increases labour productivity by 157%. That would be considerable cost reduction. On the other hand, lubrication best practices extend oil change intervals to five or more years against what the equipment manufacturers specify. This also saves cost. Do not take the facilities from the current investor owners. It would be our pleasure to further suggest ways to achieve the opinion expressed here.
Prof Ben A. Onunwor, Rotating Machinery Co. (Nig) Ltd., Port Harcourt.
END
Be the first to comment