Engr Aliyu Tahir, the Managing Director of the Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA), in this interview, speaks on why power outages will continue in the country, and what the government is doing to ensure that substandard electricity materials are removed from the sector.
There are concerns over the importation of substandard electrical products into Nigeria. What is the level of your collaboration with SON?
The Act establishing the Nigeria Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA), which is the NEMSA Act 2015, and now the Electricity Act 2023, has a provision that mandates NEMSA to collaborate with the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) in ensuring that all electrical materials and equipment are of the right quality and standard. We are collaborating with SON. We currently have an MOU that was signed between us.
First of all, NEMSA is part and parcel of all the committees, the partners that were set up by SON to develop these standards. So, right from inception, we are part of the development of these standards. Secondly, I agree with you that there are a lot of substandard electrical materials and equipment in the country.
We are not at the entry points, but customs and SON have been at the entry points. So collaboration with SON is that when we carry out our statutory activities like the inspection of these electrical installations, where we identify these substandard electrical materials and equipment, we ensure that they are removed from the system, and these are escalated to SON for them to now go into the market and ensure they are removed from the market.
So, we have a standing committee between us that is in charge of this, identifying, escalating and ensuring that these are removed from the markets.
NEMSA is also collaborating with other agencies, like the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Council, where we give them expert advice on cases of consumers having issues with their electricity supply.
We’re also collaborating with the National Insurance Commission, where we ensure that facilities to be insured are inspected, tested, and certified by NEMSA before such an insurance policy.
We are also in talks with customs, especially for the substandard electrical materials and equipment that are coming into the country, where we’re looking at allowing NEMSA to also have access to the customs platform, so we can view and inspect the material before they are finally allowed to come into the country.
Can we have an insight into the findings of your latest audit?
When we did the analysis of all the incidents we’ve investigated so far, we discovered that there are a lot of them that involve the personnel of the utility companies. And when we now drilled down, we discovered that most of the causes are lack of adherence to approved procedures to safety requirements in the operations of the networks and their maintenance. So, we now have to look at their safety manuals.
First of all, we ensure that the utility companies have all safety manuals, where all these procedures and safety requirements are well defined. At the end of that, we now have to carry out audits of these utility companies to ensure that they are implementing the provisions of those safety manuals. We’ve audited about eight of them so far.
This exercise is still ongoing. And we’ve made a lot of observations through this audit exercise. One of the observations is that, you know, we have what we call the health and safety codes that were developed by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission.
So, it is part of those documents that contain the regulations and we had to enforce the regulations. But we also discovered that some of these safety manuals are not actually in line with the health and safety codes of the country.
We have seen maintenance works that are done hastily. This is electricity which is associated with a lot of hazards, and these hazards are really affecting the very professionals in the sector.
So, you need to plan. Any work you’re going to do, you need to plan, identify the hazards, and mitigate them in your plan before you embark on the exercise. That’s what we call a toolbox meeting, where you identify these hazards, put mitigation measures, and then embark on the exercise.
DisCos have been experiencing blackouts in their networks due to issues with electricity feeders. What is the cause of these disruptions?
I can give you a quick example of that. Because when you look at the feeders that are meant to transfer bulk power from transmission to distribution – the 33kv primary feeder lines – these feeders have been encumbered in so many ways by installing point load transformers; small transformers on the feeders. They are to carry bulk power from transmission to injection substation. But when you now install smaller transformers, 200 kVA, 100 kVA, 50 kVA, on those lines, each installation constitutes a fault location.
So, any tripping from one of such locations affects the feeder, and sometimes these trippings are translated up to transmission. So, when you have these feeders that are now linking transmission and distribution being disturbed, having so many frequent trippings, you know that definitely there won’t be any smooth power flow between transmission and distribution. That has affected the networks. So what we did, we quickly now sent out a directive that restricts the use of this 33kv primary feeder line for point load connection in the country.
People are looking for power supply, and they see regular power supply in the 33 kV feeders, so much of them try to go into it and the utility companies are also looking for money, so they won’t care whether they will get the money, because those who are going for the 33 kV feeders are those customers that can’t pay. So they also struggle to make sure that those customers are connected to the 33kv feeder line.
There is a proliferation of renewable energy, especially solar, is NEMSA inspecting this solar material?
We have been inspecting the renewable energy projects, especially the solar mini-grids. Some of them are standalone solar mini-grids; some are already interconnected solar mini-grids. So, we’ve been inspecting them, and we’ve also been monitoring the existing ones in the country; the solar components and materials.
Recently, we had a workshop where we discussed the various standards and regulations concerning these renewable energy components and materials, and we sensitised the developers. So, we are now moving into the next step, where we have identified all the components and materials with their various vendors in the country. So, we are going to meet them one after the other to ensure that these solar components and materials are certified.
Through the inspections that we do, we identify the substandard ones and ensure that they are removed from the system and replaced. I told you earlier that we have a collaboration with SON, and through our collaboration, we ensure that those substandard materials and substandard components are actually removed from the market.
The solar home system is widely used in the country, what are the dangers if they are not properly installed?
The solar home system, too, is a power plant that generates electricity for the homes, and it has all the components – the wiring, and so on and so forth. So, ensuring that the solar home system installation is carried out by certified personnel is the first thing to do.
Ensuring that installation is also tested and certified is the second thing to do. And then ensuring that the installation is adequately maintained, because once you have completed an installation and it is in use, you definitely need to maintain it from time to time. So, these three things must be adhered to, because the electricity that is being generated is associated with a lot of hazards, and these hazards are real.
I can give you an example. One can go to his house and discover that his fridge is shocking; this is to show that there’s a leakage. How do you arrest that leakage? It is to ensure that in your house installation, you have an effective heating system, and you have that equipment that is now installed to detect these leakages and ensure that the power supply is cut off immediately from the leakage site until it is absorbed. And you can arm that equipment before you can now get power supply.
Q: Just last week, the Minister of Power said that meters are needed in the community. Have you certified the type of meters we are importing?
We have programmes on metering to ensure that the metering gap in the country, which is huge, is closed as quickly as possible. One of the programmes is what we call the Presidential Metering Initiative, which is expected to bring in about seven million meters into the country in phases. NEMSA is fully involved in this programme. And they said that the meters are coming in. Some of them will be imported; some will be assembled or manufactured within the country.
So, all these meters that are coming in, we will ensure that they are tested and certified before they are allowed to be deployed. Those ones that are coming under the World Bank programme, we are already in the process of certifying them, and those ones are already in our labs, are being tested and certified in the country. It will not be possible for them to deploy uncertified meters.
I also want to use this opportunity to remind us that when we go back to our houses, let us look at our meters. Look at the meters, because the meters will have features that indicate that they have passed through the NEMSA laboratories. And those features are one, the NEMSA cream seal; metal cream seal.
