Empowering Nigeria with Reliable Electricity

Auto-Reclosing Circuit Breakers have a remarkable capability to improve SAIDI and SAIFI figures, and engineering firm NOJA Power congratulate Nigerian utility Ikeja Electric with their remarkable network reliability improvements through deployment of their first smart grid using NOJA Power OSM Reclosers. After a successful pilot on the Akute 33kV feeder in Nigeria, Ikeja Electric have continued rollout of the project providing reliability improvements that will power homes and businesses of the region.

“The radial nature of feeders in our network make it difficult to discriminate healthy portion from unhealthy portion when a fault occurs. This leads to frequent feeder tripping, high ATC&C losses and lack of flexibility,” reports Joseph Echebi from the Operations and Maintenance Technical Services team at Ikeja Electric. “Installation of line mounted auto recloser technology is one of the technological innovations identified by the business for improved distribution network reliability and market efficiency. Auto reclosers will bring tremendous commercial and technical benefits to the business which culminates to a sustainable improvement in revenue.”

The network performance improvement has been astounding for the region. Joseph added, “A pilot installation of this technology was carried out in July on Akute 33kV feeder successfully. The recloser was installed at the midpoint of the feeder. After the installation, the MTTR for transient faults improved from 16 hours to less than a minute (15 secs to 55 secs depending on the number of shots). Also, permanent faults on the portion of the circuit after the recloser is efficiently isolated without tripping the entire 17km feeder length with an average load of 9MW. We also use the recloser to seamlessly carry out planned load shedding for effective load management. This is done remotely from our headquarters using the GSM communication feature of the [NOJA Power] RC-15.”

Following the success of the pilot, two more have been successfully installed on Ijede 33kV feeder in September 2018. These installations have significantly improved the operational efficiency and load management in those locations.

“It is great to see our product making a difference in Nigeria and I would also like to congratulate Joseph Echebi and his team” says NOJA Power Group Managing Director Neil O’Sullivan. “Joseph is applying his factory training knowledge to our products to make a real difference in the electricity network of Nigeria.”

With these installations, Ikeja Electric and Nigeria join the list of 88 nations with NOJA Power OSM Reclosers in service. These devices are issued with functionality to handle the adoption of renewable energy around the world as standard, enabling safe, green and reliable energy for their full 30 year service life.

With a mission to Empower the World, NOJA Power are committed to developing technology enabling safe and reliable electricity for humankind. The OSM Recloser product is the culmination of decades of experience in the smart grid industry, providing the ideal starting point for smart grid technology deployment and network reliability improvement.

If you have a network reliability challenge to solve or would like to learn more about smart-grids, reclosers or solving renewable connections, contact your local NOJA Power Distributor.