Siemens Power, the German company behind Nigeria’s Presidential Power Initiative (PPI) says the deal to upgrade Nigeria’s grid would be completed in 2030, 5 years after the original due date.
This was disclosed by Oladayo Orolu, head of business development and government relations at Siemens Energy said in an interview with Bloomberg on Monday.
He blamed delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which they say disrupted supply chains.
Orolu in the interview revealed that the rehabilitation and expansion of Nigeria’s electricity grid by 2025, will now only conclude the project in 2030, according to the report he said: “The three-phase project was set back by delays in starting the first phase.”
“When we conceptualized this project in 2018, our plan was within two years we should be done with phase one, but then Covid happened, disrupting supply chains, which meant getting raw materials took longer than before.”
They added that cost overruns also affected the project’s completion, as they expect electricity output to increase by an additional 2,000 megawatts at the completion of phase one by 2025, with the objective of phase one to quick fix projects that will free up 2,000 megawatts.
He said: “We currently have 5000, we are looking at taking that to 7,000,”
“Prices are not at the same level they used to be. Some raw material components costs have been doubled, some are still close to where they used to be, some are just marginally higher.”
