The 16-year-old 10 megawatts Katsina Wind Farm will be inaugurated by the end of March, Minister of Power, Engineer Sale Mamman, has said.
The minister who disclosed this on his social media handle said the inauguration of the N5billion project, initiated in 2005 during Umaru Musa Yar’adua as governor of Katsina state, was part of the Federal Government’s efforts towards investing in renewable energy.
The project, which was later taken over by the federal government, is located at Lambar Rimi area of state, and had been slated for inauguration five times by previous and present administration.
Giving some detail on the project, Mamman said the project consists of the Engineering, Procurement, Construction (EPC) and installation contract of 37 units of GEVMP with 275 (kilowatts) power capacity of wind turbine generators.
“It has step-up transformers for each turbine with a capacity of 315KVA for 33 kilovolts (kV) and 400 volts (V) at distributed power supply level,” he said.
“The plant also has a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system for data collection, performance monitoring and control as well as for remote supervision.
“The project also involves the installation of two units of 7.5 megavolts ampere (MVA) transformers and its accessories.
“From the substation, a 33kV transmission line spanning 17km was constructed to link up with the 132/33kV TCN substation at the Umaru Musa Yar’adua University in Katsina along with the extension of the 33kV bus bar.”
The minister said the contract came with two years’ Operation and Maintenance (O&M) spare parts, the minister revealed.
The project also came with the construction of 23 kilometres of 33 kilovolt (kV) power transmission line from the 10MW Wind Farm. The line evacuates the generated power to the 132/33kV substation belonging to the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) and already commissioned.