Steady Supply
Dependent on Customers’ Timely Payment - Engr. Isah
 |
Engr. Isha Ahmed, Head, Operation and Maintenance |
Engr. Isah Ahmed is the new Head, Operation and
Maintenance, Kaduna Electric. He shares his thoughts on new job, how his office
impacts on the overall company efficiency and what needs to be done to improve
power supply challenges. Read on...
CCD: You were once
a BDRO and now Head Operation and Maintenance. What has changed in your job
specification?
The major
differences are in the coverage areas, customer interface and revenue
collection. At the regional office, BDROs are concerned only with those service
centers under heir purview while at Operations and Maintenance we oversee the
entire franchise areas/states, where Kaduna Electric operates.
BDROs mostly
interface with customers on daily basis, more like the front-desk officer of
the business. BDRO’s office is the first point of customer complaints,
technical, commercial and otherwise. Whereas in Operations and Maintenance, we
usually only attend to those spilled-over complaints (technical) that were
either not resolved within the timeline/expectations of customers or were not
completely attended to or resolved by the concerned region due to one challenge
or the other.
Though BDRO is the
Chief Executive Officer of his region, meaning that, all activities including
Operations and Maintenance within his region are coordinated from his office,
his/her main concern is revenue collection growth.
Operations and
Maintenance only gives support to the region in revenue collection. Our
performance is measured against efficient dispatch of energy/power supply as
per company operational modalities, ensuring that at no time our energy
consumption does not exceed our 8% allocation of the total energy generated on
the grid.
The similarities
between the two functions is that we are all working towards the same goals,
delivering efficient energy supply and customer services that will exceed our
customers expectations and keep them continuously delighted, which will in
turn, guarantee returns for the services rendered.
CCD: Many people
still don’t understand what operations and maintenance is, can you throw more
light on this?
Operations and
Maintenance has three core departments, namely Power System, O&M (HT, LT)
and Protection & Testing.
Power System
Department is saddled with the responsibility of ensuring that the 8% of total
generated power allocated to Kaduna Electric is adhered to. This is achieved by
constantly checking the actual nationwide generation at all the time. If at any
time generation goes up, the quantum of energy as per our 8% allocation goes
and vice versa. Power System ensures economic dispatch of this same energy to
Green feeders, followed by Yellow and lastly Red feeders. Although there are
rural feeders (Red feeders) the sources of which emanate from TCN directly, and
which enjoy almost 24 hours of supply. These kinds of feeders are out of our
control.
The Classification
of feeders into Green, Yellow and Red is based on customers’ energy consumption
and their payment response studied over long period.
Another group
within Power System Department is Emerging Technology Group. This group is
presently carrying out various studies on all our Injection substations with a
view to making the substation suitable and ready for Supervisory, Control and
Data Acquisition system (SCADA) and full automation.
Maintenance aspect
of Operations and Maintenance, is subdivided into two departments, O&M (HT)
and O&M (LT).
O&M (HT)
Department is responsible for maintenance of HT lines (33 & 11 KV), power
transformers, injection substations and associated switchgears. They ensure
preventive maintenance of HT equipment and lines are drawn on yearly basis and
broken down to monthly. They also monitor feeder performance as per forced
outages and follow up with regional O&M team to ensure the feeders are
restored to circuit within MTTR (Mean Time To Restore) as per regulator
timeline (NERC).
O&M (LT)
Department handles the bulk of customer complaints. This department is
responsible for day to day maintenance of all low equipment and lines.
This department is
currently working on establishing transformer workshop at the head office where
all failed distribution transformer will be repaired and thereafter, return to
circuit.
CCD: We understand
that the department is saddled with the responsibility of operations and
maintenance of the company’s installations, how well has these been achieved?
We have achieved a
lot in areas of controlling unnecessary outages on our medium voltage lines,
having more visibility on our feeders than before, which translate to more
hours of power supply to our customers. In the areas of maintenance, we are
able to maintain most of our injection substations, lines and distribution
substation with least cost. This resulted in fewer forced outages than before
and improved service delivery to our customers.
CCD: We are now
deep in the rainy season, what are the challenges your department is faced with
and how has it fared?
Rainy season
always poses some challenges to our operations due to the nature of our
network. Our network is an overhead, which is opened to rain/wind storm
disruptions. The rain and wind always resulted in feeder outages; branches of
nearby trees fall on the line; sometimes also broken poles or wire cuts cause
this.
Rainy season also
brings moisture. We usually experience more termination point’s
failure due to moisture accumulation on such termination points, be it on
underground cable, RMU (Ring Main Unit), Raychem termination or metering
points.
We have fared very
well this year in terms of responding to outages caused by rainstorm. This
year, we have not had long outages that usually last for days or weeks but
there is room for improvement. We are working to reduce the outages to minutes
and possibly later bringing to zero minutes.
CCD: Is there any
region or state that we cannot provide steady power supply due to the capacity
limitation, if yes what are you doing to improve the situation?
We have no region
or state that we cannot provide steady power supply due to capacity limitation.
We have enough capacity on our distribution network. We only have areas that
cannot be accessed due to security challenges, like in the case of
Magami-Dansadau in Zamfara state.
Our biggest
challenges in the quest for steady power supply are high rate of vandalism and
rampant theft of our vital equipment and accessories, e.g. armored cables,
transformer and transformer oil. But we are working with Admin and our internal
Security and security agencies to curtail the menace.
CCD: Does it mean
that when the distribution network is fixed, we can now be guaranteed
sufficient and steady power supply?
Fixing
distribution network alone, may not guarantee sufficient and steady power
supply. There has to be enough generation with sufficient spinning reserve to
cater for system turbulence, robust and adequate transmission network, and
enough liquidity within the entire value chain. We can have enough
generation, robust transmission network and good distribution network but if our
customers refuse or do not pay for the consumed energy, the whole system will
be grounded.
Therefore, customers’ timely payment for the energy delivered and
consumed is the sure sustenance of the industry, which in turn
guarantees sufficient and steady power supply. Therefore, we should all strive,
including government, to see that customers pay for the exact energy they
consume. Government should support the industry with legislations that will
seriously deal with issue of energy theft, meter bypass, customers’ refusal to
pay for the energy consumed and vandalism.
CCD: Any
suggestions, advice or appeal to the management and staff?
Let me start with
staff: my appeal to staff is to be more dedicated to their job; they should
always own tasks/assignment given to them.
Ownership and
strict supervision are what we are lacking in Kaduna Electric. We need to own
our jobs; Kaduna Electric belongs to us. This is where we earn a living. We
collect our salaries every month despite the fact that the company is running
at a loss. I can say based on my experience working with private organizations
including multinationals, Kaduna Electric is the most generous company I have
ever worked in, because the company continues to pay salary even when our
collection efficiency is less than 50%.
To management, I
will say there is need to be more patient whenever we are trying to implement a
given strategy. Sometimes we should not expect to see immediate and
satisfactory result within 30 days. We need to give it time while we remain
focused and persistent.
Ours is not a
rocket or space shuttle that once launched, it accelerates and leaves earth
immediately. Rather, our business is like a locomotive or coal fired train that
requires time to gather momentum, but once it accelerates, stopping it will be
very hard.
We equally need to
push for adoption of technologies that will provide solutions to our current
challenges. Most of our tasks are labour driven; we need to mix it with
technology solutions. I appreciate the effort of management in developing
in-house solutions that ease our way of doing things. I employ my colleagues to
key-in and embrace these innovations.
