ADOPTING AND IMPLEMENTING PRACTICAL RELIABILITY TOOLS IN NIGERIA ELECTRIC POWER INDUSTRY

Abstract

The dynamics of power plant operations and maintenance has changed drastically over the past decades. In the past, generation and supply of power to both the pub lic and industrial sectors was not competitive, partly because most of the businesses of power generation, transmission and distribution were owned and run by government. The event turned out to be no business as the managers of those plants were not faced with stiff competitions. And as such were not on their heels create, seek and apply new technologies in power operations and management. With the dwindling efficiencies, resulting in outages, black out, most countries developed and adopted new business models where the private sector were allowed to fully own and run the business of power generation, transmission and distribution especially with changing expectations of customers’ demands for energy; the power sector became more competitive, resulting in the exit of non-performers. Reliability and availability of power plants become a central focus. The successes recorded in global power sector serves as a business model for non performing countries to copy or modify and apply. This forms the theme of this research to show case how the Nigeria electric power industry can key in into this successful model to turn the fortune of the Nigeria electric power industry in a positive direction. This research presents reliability engineering principles that should be adopted by the Nigeria electric power industry in order to optimize plants’ operations and deliver the needed posi-watt and not nega-watt to the ever ready consumers. It is believed that if these measures are judiciously applied, the Nigeria electric power industry will make a huge jump and join the global counterparts in electric energy generation and supply of the needed power.