By Nurat Uthman
Prof. Emenike Ejiogu, the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), proposed on Thursday to introduce 7,000 megawatts of electricity through a gasification plant across all 774 local government areas in Nigeria.
Prof. Ejiogu, who is also the Director of the Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Power and Energy Development (ACE-SPED), emphasized the need for Nigeria to adopt an energy mix to prevent an energy crisis that is negatively impacting the economy.
He stated that the current national grid is inadequate to meet the country’s energy demands.
Speaking at the 190th Inaugural Lecture of the University of Nigeria, Prof. Ejiogu explained that the gasification plant, which is a locally designed and fabricated engineering system, converts organic solid materials into synthetic gas for electricity generation and other purposes.
He proposed that 10,000 megawatts of electricity can be injected into all local government areas in Nigeria through distributed energy generation.
Prof. Ejiogu highlighted the disadvantages of the conventional power industry in Nigeria, which relies on large generating plants and long-distance transmission lines, leading to significant financial losses.
He emphasized the need for distributed-generation of energy through the creation of micro and mini grids across different locations in Nigeria.
The advantage of this approach is that power can be generated and managed locally, reducing the dependence on transmission lines and imported materials.
By connecting these micro and mini grids, a network can be formed, allowing for the infusion of a substantial amount of energy into the power sector without extensive investments in transmission lines and other materials. This gasification plant is considered an enabling technology that can be implemented across all 774 local government areas in Nigeria, providing each area with 10 megawatts of power which would result in 7,740 megawatts of power.
This is already more than what our national grid is generating and transmitting. If the political will is there, you can infuse a huge amount of energy in our sector within a period of two to three years. It is only the gasification technology that can give you that flexibility because we would be producing fuel from waste materials and coal which are in abundance in this country,” he explained.
He also said “With the current epileptic power supply in the country occasioned by the frequent collapse of the national grid, this is time to give proper attention to alternative power sources.
“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.
“Organizations can comfortably 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 and services of organisations in Nigeria, which as well have affected the national economy because some organisation can no longer operate under the epileptic power supply with price of diesel always on a high side,” he said.
In his address, 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.
He described Prof. Ejiogu’s lecture as germane, especially as the country is still grappling with epileptic power supply, adding that keying into the lecturer’s alternative power generation would save Nigeria some cost of running only on the conventional power.
