Paper

Inaugural IEEE PES 2005 Conference and Exposition in Africa Durban, South Africa, 11-15 July 2005

Small Hydro Schemes – Taking Nigeria’s Energy Generation to the Next Level
Adewuyi Olusegun Tunde,
Undergraduate Student, 500L, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of Ilorin, P.M.B 1515, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria Phone: +234-8035167089, Email: adewuyi_segun@yahoo.com

Abstract - Astable, efficient and working power sector is necessary to transform Nigeria into a developed nation. Nigeria’s population is largely rural. The standard of living of many Nigerians can be improved by supplying electricity to the remote rural areas. To meet the Millennium Development Goals for the country, government is pursuing the privatization of the power sector. With the increasing world oilprices, hydro power seems like the most viable means of energy generation. Nigeria has many rivers widely scattered across the nation, enhancing the potential for small hydro schemes across the country. Run-of-the-river and pump-storage schemes are the most appropriate schemes to implement. Small hydro schemes are environmentally friendly and renewable energy sources, thus making them cheaper andeasier to operate, maintain and manage. The high transmission cost, the large amount of power lost during transmission and the incessant vandalization of power infrastructure rampant at present will reduce, hence cheaper power can be produced. This paper is a proposal for the adoption of small hydro schemes in energy generation. A typical small hydro generation scheme is designed for a site inNigeria taking into consideration climatic, hydrological, geological, environmental, economic and technical factors. The scheme can be put to other complementary uses like irrigation, fish farming, tourist attraction and recreational facilities.

I. INTRODUCTION Nigeria is the most populated country in the West African sub-region. Nigeria is a developing nation, hence much of her infrastructure arestill being put in place. Electricity is said to be the soul of industry, hence a stable, efficient and workable power sector is essential for the growth and development of any nation. One of the key indices for measuring development and utilization of productive capacity of a nation is the level of electricity consumption and the readiness of such country to meet demand for power while alsohaving spare generation, transmission and distribution capacity. Nigeria ranked low on all these indices [7]. Currently, Nigeria is plagued with a dilapidated, unreliable, obsolete and ineffective power supply sector. To be able to meet these MDGs, the power sector is being deregulated. Government has plans to privatize the generation, transmission and distribution sub-sectors. The development of anynation depends to a large extent on the ability to provide an enabling environment for

industrialization to thrive. Taking into consideration the relevance of the power sector, these lofty goals can not be achieved unless the rising demand for power is met by a corresponding increase in supply. Urbanization and rural development can only thrive where power is available and cheap. At present,most of Nigeria’s generation is from high head water storage reservoirs like Kainji Dam and the Gas (Thermal power) generation plants like Egbin Thermal station which are becoming increasingly costly and difficult to maintain. The power supply network of the country is centralised. Nigeria has an installed generation capacity of 6210.20MW with the Kainji, Shiroro and Jebba Dams contributing 32.1% ofthat proportion and supplying vast sections of the country consequently making them very strategic to Nigeria’s power generation. Of the 6210.20 MW, the average availability for the year 2002 was 3211.44MW, i.e. just 51.7% of the installed capacity[6]. This makes the national power supply susceptible to any problem that may arise from these dams as is currently the case with the low rainfalls...