Light Up Nigeria published a series of facts about power in Nigeria this morning. Jeremy Weate compiled them, and I'm piggy backing on his work.

Credit goes to Amara Nwankpa for collating these facts.

*1881: year Electricity was first generated in England. 15 yrs before Nigeria

*1896 The year electricity was first generated in Nigeria. Place was Ijora, in Lagos.

*60KW - Nigeria's generation capacity in 1896.

*Kainji Dam: The oldest, still functional power plant in Nigeria, is about 40 years old.

*48% - percentage of Nigerians who have NO source of power, 114 years after we first generated power in Nigeria,

*40%: percentage of the population served by the National grid

*60%: The average percentage of time when the 40% served by the grid don't have power.

*Kainji Dam: What it was designed produce 760MW, What it is producing now: 400MW. Why? Faulty parts

*3: Number of Hydro Plants in Nigeria. 1939: Amount of power in MW, they are supposed to generate. 1000: What they generate

*11: Number of Thermal Plants in NG. 5976: Amount of power in MW, they are supposed to generate. 2589: What they generate

*There are 16 ongoing power generation projects designed to generate 12,500MW for the national grid

*If the projects were completed today, Nigeria would have 20,000MW capacity in generation. BUT,

*BUT, The National transmission grid is only designed to carry 4,800MW. So 75% of that capacity will useless,

*But it also gets WORSE. Some of the electricity generated is "lost" in transmission. (Transmission Loss)

*Transmission losses usually should not exceed 7%. This means that if 100MW is generated, at least 93MW should get to u!

*The Transmission losses on the Nigerian grid is 35%!!!!! So if 100MW is generated only 65MW gets to you!!

*Please find a diagram of the NG transmission system attached. Notice the TX losses?? http://yfrog.com/114n5g

*Transmission losses in Nigeria are the highest in the world. more than 3 times what is normal.

*Even if we generate 2000GW, our grid will only be able to carry 4800 MW and 1,600MW of that will be WASTED

*So why does the Nigerian transmission grid have such a high loss?? Sabotage! Illegal Connections, Poor Equipment

*There were 12 cases of sabotage of the transmission grid in Nigeria in 2008 alone. (TCN)

*N1m. The amount in Naira paid to Ajibode Community as reward 4 assistance in apprehension of two powerline vandals in 08.

*30 years: The average age of the equipment on the National grid. Older than most of you!!

*To illustrate the capacity issues on the National grid consider the following example:

*River State spends $161m to generate 275MW. Capacity of Grid into Rivers 100MW. 175MW: what RSG paid 4 they don't get

*Rivers State is only getting 40% benefit of their own investment because of grid limitations.

*Over 90 transmission projects are ongoing, to add an additional 9,000MW to the capacity of the grid

*Even if all 90 transmission projects are completed, There will still be a shortfall of 10,000MW in capacity. God dey.

*But even if we complete all these projects, the biggest question is HOW WILL THEY BE MAINTAINED?

*For more information on the status of power generation projects: http:///cs056D Jan 2010, but still current.

*EFCC survey (published 2010), PHCN ranked least performing & least honest, less than political parties or the police!

*According to the same survey, 82% of the businesses surveyed admit they have bribed PHCN for "better treatment"

*If we are bribing PHCN, will they not be corrupt?

*N7/KWh - How much we buy power in Nigeria. N18/KWh - About how much it costs to generate

*N11/KWh - About how much of your electricity bill Govt. pays for you (subsidy). (shrug)

*How much of our PHCN bills do we really pay? Lets do a small check.

*950m - how much in naira Consumers in the Diobu Business Unit in PH Rivers State alone owed PHCN as at March 2010

*98bn - Amount in naira owed to PHCN by FGN MDA as at April 2009.

*70bn - Amount owed in debt to PHCN due to unsettled bills as march 2010 - Minister of State for power.

*So if the customers and the govt. are owing PHCN, how do the staff get paid?

*If you are not getting paid or paid well, are you more likely to collect bribes from saboteurs?

*Now lets talk about gas. Gas is the source of fuel for 40% of all power generated in Nigeria.

*Nigeria produces 4.2bcfd of gas every year. 55% of that is flared (burnt up)

*The amount of gas flared in Nigeria creates about 70 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year. BIG pollution

*Imagine stacking up $2.5bn in $100 notes and burning them up in a huge inferno? That’s what we do when we flare gas!

*The amount of gas we flare can provide electricity for ALL OF Sub-Saharan Africa

*But that is not all. The amount of gas we flare is equivalent to $2.5 BILLION every year!!

*The state of Florida has 55,460MW generating capacity. About 10 times that of Nigeria

*Texas can generate 104,966MW of electricity - beat that with a stick.

Sending this to the government would just be a waste of bandwidth.

This makes one wonder what our various governments have been doing since independence.

What a quantum of info about power generation and NEPA in Naija !!! Chxta, I missed reading your intellectually stimulating posts . Good to see u back.