The Federal Government has announced plans to develop an independent super grid across the states of Nigeria, aiming to improve overall power reliability.
Following a meeting with President Bola Tinubu, Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu revealed that Tinubu directed an acceleration of repair efforts to restore electricity in northern Nigeria, which has recently faced widespread blackouts due to vandalism of critical transmission lines.
According to the Minister, the government has engaged contractors and financiers willing to set up 100 megawatts of solar power in each of the northern states, initially scaling up from 50 to 100 megawatts.
Further explaining, Adelabu highlighted the government’s goal to establish a “super grid,” an alternative to the national grid. This super grid would provide a regional backup, reducing the impact of disruptions in any single line on other states.
Adelabu said, “The world is moving. This is the 21st century and we believe that the most effective way of supplying uninterrupted, functional, stable, and reliable electricity to the northern part of Nigeria is through a distributed power model whereby each of the northern states will have an embedded utility solar scale source. All the 20 states will be insulated and immune from each other.
“We have made progress in this as we have interested contractors and financials that are ready to install 100 megawatts each for each of the 20 northern states which scalable to 50 megawatts at first and then upgraded to 100 megawatts.
“We are working on establishing a super grid which is a backup of an optional grid. If the national grid has a problem, there will be an alternative grid through which power can be transmitted.
“The world has moved beyond having a central grid; grids must be regionalised – we must have state grids so that each of the regionalised grids can be insulated from each other so that a problem in a particular line will not affect the others. That is what we are working on. Until that is done, we believe that we will keep managing what we have and reduce the frequent occurrence of grid disturbance.”
