TCN SEEKS REGULATION TO PROTECT DISCOS

                                   TCN MD, Mohammed Usman

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ransmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has advocated for a regulation by the country’s power regulatory body, Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to protect its transformers in the event of any damage caused by Electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos).

The company’s Managing Director, Mr. Mohammed Usman, made this call recently in an interview with journalists showing concern about the situation.

The TCN boss made it known that the inability of the DisCos to invest in their distribution infrastructure had resulted in the use of some of TCN’s transformers by DisCos to supply electricity. This has sometimes resulted in the breakdown of the transformers after use.

Mohammed asserted that “Under the grid code, everybody has their responsibility; we have our responsibility; and distribution companies have their responsibility. And where they fail to invest, it is not our problem that they fail to invest, but their lack of investment is affecting our system when we are connected to them. And that is why I am telling NERC that we are writing a petition that those areas where they are taking supply directly from our transformers because they have failed to build their own injection sub-station.”

He stated further, “We are going to ask NERC to put it as a rule to say that if our transformers get spoilt because of the DisCos’ failure to invest, they are going to compensate us. Because if they connect directly from our station without passing through their injection station; if there is a fault on their line, it will hit our transformers directly. Sometimes, they will come and say the fault has been cleared and TCN will restore supply, while they did not truly clear the fault and then that will scatter our transformer. We are saying, if such thing happens, we are going to write a petition asking NERC to do a regulation that will protect us.’’

Mohammed added that given the presence of several uncompleted transmission projects by some contractors in the past, TCN management was taking over the expired contracts.

According to him, these contracts have expired and most of the contracts are contracts for supply and installation of 330Kv sub-station and they are supposed to last for 18 months.

He said the sub-station in Damaturu was awarded in 2006, it is about 12 years and the contract has expired.

“The problem TCN had in the past was that it awarded contracts to incompetent companies, but under current TCN management we have changed the way we do contract now. Most of our major contracts now, we have to do pre-qualification, you have to be qualified first before you can even tender, so this kind of problem that we had will not continue. But some of the contractors that are not very difficult; we will work with them to complete the job.”

Mohammed revealed that if the contractor is like the one of Damaturu sub-station, TCN will have no choice than to exercise its right under the contract. The transmission company in its capacity is handling many contracts.

Mohammed said the company had attracted significant amount of investments, adding that international donors were willing to provide more funding to executive more transmission projects.

This, he attributed to series of audits reports conducted by the current management of the company to ensure that transmission is not an issue in Nigeria.