Edith CHUKU
Determined to deepen local content development and eliminate offshore cost and time of shipping gas turbine, generator rotors out of Nigeria for repair, Transnational Corporation PLC Transcorp, has commissioned the newly rehabilitated GT 20 unit at the Transafam Power Plant.
Transcorp Group is the parent company of Transafam Power Limited is known as one of Nigeria’s leading conglomerate with investments in the hospitality, power and oil and gas sectors, with a transactional agenda of improving lives and transforming Africa.
The newly rehabilitated facility at the power station, located at Oyigbo, Afam-Okoloma, in Rivers State, is a cleaning room where generator rotors and gas turbine are repaired.
Stating the impetus the commissioned facility is going to bring to bear on the daily operations of the plant, the MD/CEO of Transafam power limited, Mr. Vincent Chukwudi Ozoude, while addressing newsmen said, “we just commissioned the generator cleaning room. This is a repair facility where gas turbine, generator rotors are repaired.
“For operations like ours, we use such facility to repair our generator rotor, that will help us minimize the timeline of shipping generator rotors out of the country to repair centres in the middle east, in Europe and America, to get repaired and then bring it back to Nigeria. You think about the logistics associated with shipping it, think about the cost aspect of it; offshore cost, labour cost, think about the time saved, think about the capability, capacity and local content building, you are building in terms of talent development, having people to know and master the act of doing some of these skills.”
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Speaking of the installed capacity of the operations, Ozoude explained that, “we took over this plant and met it at 48MW of power, in less than a year, nine months ago, right? We’ve grown it to 188MW of power out of 966, right? So, in terms of growth, you can check it out and see.”
Also, the president and group CEO for Transcorp Group PLC, Owen Omogiafo explained that its subsidiary was planning to add additional 240 megawatts of electricity to Nigeria’s power generation capacity in 2023.
Omogiafo, who explained that currently the Transafam Power was generating 188 megawatts, stated that, “the power need of the country is great, so there is no competition, there is nothing like it’s my market, it’s your market, there is still so much space in the power sector, so we will continue to collaborate with one another to build the sector in a way that will deliver value for Nigerians at large.”
According to her, “Transactional Cooperation PLC which we all know and love and call Transcorp, its purpose is to improve lives and transform Africa, if you think about it, transformation is powered by power, it’s actually impossible to think that you will achieve any real economic transformation or liberalization of the people if you do not have power, and it’s that understanding that have led us as Transcorp under the leadership of our Group Chairman, Mr. Tony O. Elumelu to invest in power sector.
“Today, we are in Afam power plant, and which is our second investment in power. And I will say yes its been quite successful, when we took over this plant on March 10, 2021 it wasn’t like this, if you meet the management they will share with you some of the before. Even when you look at the actual work we’ve done to recover our gas turbine, which just increased the power generated for Nigerians, by Nigerians. It’s on record that we’ve recovered Afam 5 GT 20, it came back on September 20th or so, last year, and that is an additional 138MW to grid and this is power that is available to all Nigerians.
“There is still more, we have GT 17, GT 18, Afam GT 20, all ready to go. Has it been good, yes, has it been challenging, ofcourse it’s been challenging, we know that there are challenges in the power sector, but is it something that needs to be done, yes, it’s not optional because it has to be done, someone has to do it, and who better than Transcorp.”
“Our first investment on power was Ughelli power plant in 2013, when we acquired it, it was 160 megawatts but as we speak we are generating over 600 megawatts of electricity and we are contributing very strongly to Nigeria’s power sector. And it is the success of that investment that encouraged us to invest in Afam power plant despite the challenge of gas supply. It’s on record that we recovered Afam V GT20 on September last year.
“I have just been informed that we are heading to Afam III fast power which is aerodynamics technology which is expected to bring additional 240 megawatts this year.
“Our target is for us to be the leader in the power sector space and we are looking at the entire value chain. When we started we were looking at 25percent, we have invested billions. It’s a very expensive venture.”
