The Federal Government is expecting more than 500 megawatts of electricity from interconnected mini-grids being developed by the Rural Electrification Agency, it was learnt on Sunday.
Also, the government blamed Friday’s national grid collapse on the sabotage of the country’s power infrastructure by vandals, stressing that the Ikot-Ekpene Calabar 330kv tower was vandalised.
In a series of tweets via his official Twitter handle on Sunday, the Special Adviser to the President on Infrastructure, Ahmed Zakari, said the REA had been spending billions of naira on renewable energy and mini-grids.
He said, “On the back of my tweet on the grid collapse, people keep commenting about decentralised grids. The Rural Electrification Agency has been repositioned by this administration as a decentralized renewable energy agency spending billions of naira electrifying communities.
“Recently interconnected mini-grids were added to REAs mandate, meaning renewable power plants to augment the grid in urban areas. We anticipate we will have more than 500MW of interconnected mini-grids over the next few years (through) projects from Obudu, BUK (Bayero University Kano), ATBU (Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University), FUNAI (Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Ikwo), Kasuwan Magani.”
