Power failure: Institute integrity test on power equipment ” – University Don urges FG
By Patience Ikpeme
As Nigeria grapples with power failing across the electricity value chain, a professor of physics at the Ahmadu Bello University ( ABU) Zaria, Abdelghaffar Amoka Abdelmalik implores the federal government to institute regulation on integrity tests on power equipment such as electrical rotating machines for generation and power transformers before installation.
In addition, Amoka implored the government to support the university to establish, a power equipment diagnostic centre as a way out, just as he urged electricity companies to prioritise the monitoring of transformer conditions and identification of inception of faults prior to failure for a better service delivery.
Prof. Amoka itemized these, as part of his recommendations to tackle intractable power supply challenge of the country in his inaugural lecture delivered over the weekend titled ” imagine a world of electricity without it”.
“Power equipment failure is an expensive event. Some of the faults are manufacturing faults from the factory. There should be federal government regulation to perform integrity tests on power equipment such as electrical rotating machines for generation and power transformers before installation”.
“The government should support the university in establishing a power equipment diagnostic centre to achieve that. Electricity companies prioritise monitoring of transformer conditions and identification of inception of faults prior to failure for better service delivery”, Amoka submitted.
He recalled some past researches on finding alternatives for power generation which were abandoned midway.
“Research on groundnut oil as a possible alternative transformer oil started in the university as far back as 1980 at the Department of Electrical Engineering, ABU Zaria (ABUDEE). The research was discontinued when the high voltage laboratory became inactive. Meanwhile, the first commercially available natural ester transformer oil was introduced in the year 2000- products of research and development that started in the early 1990s in North America”.
“Environtemp FR3 Ester and Midel EN fluids were produced from some seed oils. Cargill was in Ghana a few years ago to market FR3 ester fluid for Ghana’s electricity industry. If we had sustained this 1980 research, Nigeria may have produced a vegetable oil based transformer oil even before the commercially available natural ester transformer fluid that came out around 2000- a product of research and development that started in the early 1990s in North America”, he noted.
Continuing, the University Don noted the existence of plenty of non-edible seeds with high oil yield. “There is the need to intensify our effort on research and development on seed oil based transformer oil. We can have a Nigerian produced ester transformer oil in a few years.
Growing pressure over the handling of efficient electricity supply and customer satisfaction is placing asset engineering in a background role in electricity transmission and distribution”, he said.
