ASB VALIANT PROPOSES INDUSTRIAL GAS TURBINE SOLUTION TO POWER GENERATION

Ayodele Ikumapayi is the Managing Director of AsB Valiant Company Limited, an integrated energy solutions company that seeks to develop capacities for the power plant industry. A player in the power sector developing captive power plants, using industrial power gas turbine applications which are considered more cost effective and guaranteeing high availability of power generation compared to what obtains today.

Focusing on the verb Valiant, which connotes strength, AsB seeks to stand as a strong indigenous company that will offer alternative end to end solution to the power requirements of the power sector. Also, It looks forward to the future with a desire to capture the minimum of 25% of the Nigerian electricity requirements using its turbine proposal.

Former Manager with Shell Producing Development  Company SPDC, and credited with the big relief from power generation challenges at the RCCG Redemption camp ground  on Lagos-Ibadan express way, which camp ground is now being powered by gas turbine alternative since 2010.

In an exclusive interview with Charles NWACHI, the man whose brainchild the gas turbine is, maintains that his alternative power generation application proposal is a better option for the Nigerian national electricity challenges. Details follow below.

Strategy adapted Our strategy starts from being able to carry out studies on the various power requirements in the country and as much as there are national approaches by the Nigerian government to provide electricity, we think that doing captive approaches to clusters or stand alone communities to attend to their power needs would be a good start since at the moment, power availability from the grid is not very reliable and several organizations and communities have resorted to alternative generation applications using reciprocating engines like diesel generations  and some places gas generators which also application were not really designed for continuous power generation, but as a back up, but now many of them have become base for power generation.

We are coming into the Nigerian market looking at how we can help provide a more reliable and cost effective solution using the industrial gas turbine both for industries and for communities for their base power generation which we believe will be cheaper and also with guaranteed higher availability which will reduce the cost of their generating electricity better than whatever they are doing at the moment.

In practical terms What are really the power challenges in Nigeria today? For a population of over 167 million people, we are struggling to generate 5,000 megawatts of electricity even though we have a power plant with the capacity to generate over 7,000 megawatts. But today, we think power in Nigeria is in excess of over 50,000 megawatts and looking at that situation, Lagos alone for instance, from our estimate requires close to 10,000 megawatts to be able to function as a city not to talk of other cities. But looking at the cost of availability, because there is deficiency in the power availability, and people have to resort to alternative means of power generation, the very first cost is the fuel cost where people have to use in most cases diesel to generate electricity. Today the cost of diesel is in average of about N165 per litre and good efficient equipment doing a 2.5 per litre per kilowatts, means you will be doing huge sum for fuel alone excluding operating cost.

Advantage So with the kind of application we have, we have a situation where we have equipment that can operate on natural gas. Today, for a captive up taker, natural gas is about N32 per litre. If you look at that, it is an efficiency of about 1.3 for cost of fuel - around N10-N11 per litre for your fuel cost, so it is a lot of margin.

Also for your reciprocating engine application, cost of engine generators like you commonly call them, you need to have multiple units. If you run a generator for instance, a diesel engine, you need to change your oil, you need to shut your equipment down and run equipment  test because they are not there to run continuously, you need to alternate them. But for a turbine, your single unit can run 8,000 hours which translates to about 1 year giving you non-stop and uninterrupted supply.

Another advantage Another advantage is to also run on alternative fuel. Today where you have people who are using generators and are even trying to prefer gas to power the engines, you discover that they have to keep diesel engines and gas engines because you don't have gas available 365 days in a year, so when there is no natural gas, they have to revert back to their diesel engine. But we have a turbine that does not only have the capacity to run on natural gas, but without interruption, you can easily switch over to diesel because the same equipment can run on diesel and today, the cost effectiveness is such that we are not even looking at promoting diesel as the alternative fuel, but the alternative fuel we are promoting is bringing industrial gas turbine application caterpillar brand which has the capacity to run three different kinds of fuel. We have an application that can operate on natural gas, and it has the capability to run on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and then in the event of the non availability of any of these, you can also operate on diesel. The advantage of also operating on LPG is that you cannot store natural gas, just as you can store diesel, you also store LPG on site. Today, Nigeria produces according to survey we did, almost 4 million tones of LPG and I don't think we consume up to 25% of it. So this also gives the opportunity for more LPG utilization to beef up the utilization in a clearer environment. So that is the one way of looking at the cost effectiveness and the cost of LPG today is ranging between N80-N110 compared to the price of diesel. Automatically, there will be reasonable cost saving on the part of the equipment owner.

Yet another advantage Also we did a study recently about the longevity of some of these generators people use here, and discovered that on the average, the life span of the engine we use within Nigeria is between 7-10 years for a brand new engine. But the average life span of the turbine is 25 years. And this equipment operates continuously. If you are operating a gas engine or diesel engine, for a gas engine you will need to build your plant maintenance at an average of 1,500-2000 running hours, while on diesel engine an average of about 500 hours will be required for you to do your oil and filter change and other accessories. But for a turbine, you run continuously for 1 year without a need to change any of the components including the oil. When you shut down in 1 year, you carry out inspection because the turbine also is self-diagnostic and runs in such a way that it maintains healthiness report which gives you the state of the equipment. After one year when you shut down, you carry inspection and after you start up the machine again, you don't need to change the oil or any thing if it is not contaminated to affect the over all life of the equipment. That's about 30-50,000 running down depending on how careful you run your equipment. This is what we call cost effectiveness with guaranteed  high availability  and reduction in your operational cost for either a community or organization and one other thing we consider also is instead of having to promote these individual organizations, we have had to engage institutions like the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria looking at their various differential clusters, and then advice them to set up captive power plants that can easily support the operations of the industry within that cluster.

Number one, it takes away a lot of loses because today, over 10% of what we generate economically are lost via transmission. If we can have that captive arrangement, you are close to your source of generation, at the same time, you have quick intervention in the event of any power outage to support your equipment, and you don't need to wait for PHCN. This is what is being done in other developed not even quite developed economies like Turkey, India. In places like I mentioned, industries are not cited in major cities rather at suburbs where activities are taken out of the major cities so every region can grow at their own pace.

Elsewhere Apart from that, like in Turkey, within the regions of Konya or Chevzkoy, different industrial parts with dedicated power utilities that serve such parts. You don't have to be relying on the national grid to meet up your power needs, rather the grid should serve as a back up for your power down times, such that the national grid supplier supplies to major cities. But for industrial requirements, it is the captive power plant for the clusters needing about 30, 50 or 100 megawatts, in some cases, and we have a case study of our partners in Turkey. This is what we believe is the best way to go in Nigeria.

The RCCG cluster Could that be a way out of our epileptic power generation in the country? The power solution provider says emphatic yes, citing the Redeemed camp for an example.

Today, one of the communities where people speak confidently of having uninterrupted electricity is the Redemption camp community along Lagos-Ibadan expressway. Here is a community that generated their own electricity since April 2010 and has had minimal interruption till date. Before the advent of setting up their own power plant, it used to be a huge challenge to meet up with their power needs. But today, they have overcome that. That's why we believe that for universities, industrial clusters and stand alone communities could also overcome some of their power problems. If that is achieved, whatever is on the grid can be distributed among other parts and regions of the country where there are limitations to meet their power needs. This we think is the best way we can solve our power needs.

Cities like Lagos should not be relying on power plant cited out of Lagos for meeting up its power needs. Los Angelis for instance generates average of about 17,000 megawatts to meet up their power requirements. The more power is available, the more the demand. Today, people dream about getting 10,000 megawatts, 10,000 megawatts will make Lagos a good city to live in not Nigeria. So meeting up the power needs of a country today is to look at the approach of places like River state and others who want to set up power plants to meet up their own power needs, which is the way out of the power challenges we have today.

Enabling environment How can Nigerian government leverage on this opportunity to solve our national epileptic power problem?

I think Nigerian government is already in charge, not just that they are leveraging but they have created the enabling environment. Last year about March, two regulations were signed into law, these are ways of creating enabling environment for the expected. These have formed the liberalization of the power sector. The area that we still find as a challenge is that everybody is looking up to the federal government. To think that states, organizations need to begin to look at how to establish their own plant and meet up our own electricity needs. With the regulations already on ground, any state, institution etc has what it takes to solve its power needs. The challenge has always been hype on some of the activities the states try to do. If you are going to build a power plant, it is not a rocket science thing. In all sincerity, under 24 months, you can achieve that. There is a 30 megawatts project we are doing now and it is an 8 months project. So under 12 months, you can do a 50 megawatts power plant project depending on your requirements. It is all about will power, the moment there is that will to do, and then you can look at everything that is required to do such projects. We can provide that and I think the states need to rise up.

For me, Federal government, state and local governments can take it up. Where they think they cannot meet up, they can partner with investors to set those things up and then it will go a long way to help the Nigerian power sector.

Sir, does this also apply when everybody is already talking about how to cut his/her own share of the 'national cake'. Don't we need a re-orientation in order to think differently in the direction you are going?

Yes, that may be right, but already over 50% of Nigerians are generating their own electricity by themselves using their generators. People need to sit down some times to calculate what it really costs. If you run the 'I better pass my neighbour' kind of generator, on the average, you will be running 12 hours. If you run a 2-3 KVA of petrol engine, you will use about 10 litres in 12 hrs. Lets take the 2-3 KVA for example, if you do a 10 litres running 12 hrs, it amounts to N970 for 12hrs and don't forget, there is restriction to what and what gadgets in the house the generator can carry. If you run that in 30 days, you are doing an average of about 27,000 already in a month and this can't carry your air conditioner, refrigerator, etc. You consume almost about 6litres an hour and do 12 hours, with diesel at about N150, then you are talking about N900 per hour, then for a whole day, if you do 12hrs, you are talking about N10,000 per day for diesel. So in a month, you are talking about N300,000. Today, there is that huge opportunity for people to tap into. But I think that there is a lot of failure stories in the power sector than the success stories. But we as an organization present our own case to say that it is not so. One of the slogans of our organization is, 'you can write your own also'. There is a negative impression about the sector, but is not so. Power plants can be built, either natural gas or on LPG or whatever application.

So there are so many misconceptions about the industry. I think that the capacity to make things happen is there in the country and like I said earlier, government has put in place machineries to make it work. I know that there is also an intervention fund. I hear people say they cannot access it, but people are accessing it. If your idea is not genuine, then it will be difficult for you to access. We believe there is a solution, our application is unique.

We have an industrial plant where, people don't really need to bring anything, what they need is to come with their plan and then we know there is no natural gas from the Escravos power pipeline, but you can run alternatively with LPG so the power plant is there to be able to support the industry.

This interview continues next edition