UNN professor, to give Nigeria steady electricity supply within 24 months

By Agency Report

Prof. Emenike Ejiogu, the Dean, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) says he can  inject 7,000 megawatts of electricity across the 774 local government areas to achieve steady electricity supply in the country.

Prof. Ejiogu  a professor of electrical engineering and the Director, Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Power and Energy Development (ACE-SPED).

Disclosed this in Nsukka on Thursday while delivering the 190th inaugural lecture of UNN titled "My Engineering Odyssey: Energy Security, Energy Sustainability and Bringing Power to the People."

The don said that his Gasification Energy Plant would fix the energy crisis in the country because of inability of the conventional national grid to meet country’s energy needs.

"Through the gasification plant  10,000 megawatts of electricity will be injected  in each of the 774 local government areas in the country.

"Presently the mega watts used by the whole country is not more than 5,000 mega watts,  if all the LGs will have 10,000 each there will be uninterrupted electricity in any part of the country," he said.

He explained that, the gasification plant was an engineering system  designed and fabricated with 100 per cent local content, and which converts organic solid materials into synthetic gas for electric power generation.

“The conventional power industries in Nigeria with huge generating plants, produce huge amounts of power and transmit it at a long distance.

The disadvantage of this is that you have to cover the entire country with transmission lines which will result in huge energy losses during transmission.

The technical manpower is not equally there to maintain this power arrangement because most of the materials are imported at very high cost.

“In this situation what be done is  to creat micro and mini-grids across locations in Nigeria so that we can generate power and distribute it locally.

A gasification plant is one of the enabling technologies that can help  achieve this. The advantage  of  this is that you can generate and supply  your power locally.

He also said that, the current epileptic power supply in the country is occasioned by the frequent collapse of the national grid, this is time to give proper attention to alternative power source.

“Our designed gasification plant converts solid wastes into gas, just like the refineries which turns crude oil into petrol and other products. what we need is the fund to mass produce it.

“Organisations and industries will be comfortable as era of power outage will be over depend and run on it, what is required is to change the already existing diesel generators and modify them to run on gas and it will serve as mini-grid.

“Depending on public power supply alone has negatively impacted on production outputs of industries and organisations , is now longer a news that many industries have folder while others relocate to other countries as result of poor electricity supply," he said.

According to him, if Federal Government would fund the project,  within 24 months the story of uninterrupted power supply in the country would be over.

In a remark, the Vice Chancellor of UNN, Prof. Charles Igwe, who was also the chairman of the occasion, said that Nigerian universities cannot really be autonomous if the managements can produce services which would make them self-sustaining.

Igwe described Ejiogu as an engineer of great repute that has been know nationally and internationally because of his numerous contributions to the engineering profession.

"There is urgent need to fix the epileptic power supply in the country through alternative power generation to move the country to the next level," Igwe said. (NAN)