TheCable

The Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) says it is working with electricity distribution companies (DisCos) to address power supply bottlenecks.

Chiedu Ugbo, managing director of NDPHC, spoke to journalists after leading a delegation of the management team to meet with Vice-President Kashim Shettima.

He said the company is working assiduously to address issues impeding adequate power supply in the country. 

“What you see is that the whole grid is challenged by off-take evacuations from transmission and off-take by distribution and if distribution is not able to take what the distribution can carry; transmission will not be able to take what you can generate so it is as simple as that,” he said.

“But what we are doing is, we are working assiduously to ensure end-to-end from generation to end users. We are working with distribution companies now so we are working with transmission companies to clear the bottlenecks. We also working with distribution companies to clear the bottlenecks to ensure that we reach the end users.”

Ugbo said the company had distribution interventions all over the country, to improve the capacity of DisCos.

“Right now, we are working with Eko and Ibadan distribution companies using what we call bilateral sales. So, we sell directly to them. Thankfully, the ones we are selling and some of them are paying us as and when due,” the managing director said.

“We are also targeting industrial and huge consumers who, by the National Electricity Regulatory Commission’s regulation, can take two megawatts and above. We are supplying them and we are working on supplying more.”

Ugbo added that the Nigerian governments — including federal, state, and local — have significantly invested in the development of assets on behalf of Nigerians.

“The assets are there, so, we have been charged to make sure that the assets are optimised, for the benefit of Nigerians. We need maximum performance of the assets, particularly the power generation assets, where we have gas limitations,” he said.