ENGINEERING ASSESSMENT OF POWER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM IN ADO-EKITI, NIGERIA

Abstract

Electric power is an essential facilitator for sustainable development of the modern nation state. While Nigeria is reported to suffer from severe shortages of electric power the condition of some of its newer constitutional units are unknown. In this work, electric power infrastructure and energy availability is studied for Ado-Ekiti, the principal economic and political hub of Ekiti State one of the nation's fourth generation of states. During the study, the condition of all relevant equipment for power distribution at the 33kV and 11 kV levels were sampled and assessed. Power availability was also considered by collecting data about energy supplied, faults and other outages. It was discovered that the distribution lines were in a rather poor state with as many as 25% of the poles not meeting a condition of "goodness", 33% of cross-arms being broken or unsatisfactory, about 10% of the insulators defective and almost 40% of the span not complying with standards. Power supplied between 2009 and 2010 indicated that power availability was no more than 30% with slight variations between major feeders. Further analysis indicated that the probability of having 2 consecutive hours of power was less than 25% in either year for most of the feeders indicating a very poor situation since consumers especially small scale industries and commercial enterprises can only succeed using other sources of electricity. Faults on the feeders manifest a log-normal shape of distribution which exhibited about 3000 earth faults over a nine year period corresponding to about 9x10-3 earth faults per MVAhr. Based on these findings it can be deduced that not only is the physical equipment in need of serious rehabilitation and normalization but also that even the power supplied requires better maintenance management to ensure delivery when available.