Egbin Power Plc to Raise $1.8 billion to Expand Output

Egbin Power Plc, Nigeria's largest power generating company, announced that it plans to raise the sum of $1.8 billion in a bid to more than double its generating capacity.

This was disclosed by Bloomberg in a report on Friday, citing that the company also plans to export electricity with its increased generating capacity.

It is looking at a combination of debt and equity to meet the funding requirements ahead of the start of construction work in the second quarter of next year, according to the company. “The plan is to raise the fund to be available to kick off,” it said in an email, without giving more details as the funding arrangements are being firmed up.

Egbin Power Plc, owned by Sahara Group, plans to build the second phase of its 1,320-megawatt power plant by installing “high-efficiency gas combined cycle power plants,” that will produce an additional 1,754 megawatts of electricity. The first phase of the expansion project will begin with the construction of open-cycle turbines next year and will be completed with a closed cycle by 2025, it said.

The company acquired the power plant in 2013 when the government disposed of state-owned electricity generation and distribution assets to the private sector to make them efficient and help curb blackouts. It hit the generation peak of 970 megawatts on the asset this year helped by an increase in gas supply.

Nigeria has 13,000 megawatts of installed electricity-production capacity, with only about 4,500 megawatts dispatched to the grid daily, in part because of dilapidated transmission infrastructure. The government’s privatization agency is now proposing to sell the transmission network in a bid to attract the investment needed to improve its capacity.

The company said besides boosting local supply, it plans to sell power to neighboring countries through the West Africa Power Pool, a specialized institution of the Economic Community of the West African States established to create a common electricity market for the region.

AllNews earlier reported that Egbin Power Plc announced that it recently hit the highest peak production of 970 MW and plans to add between 1,750MW and 1,900MW in its Phase Two investment expansion plan.