The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has announced plans to acquire helicopters for fault detection across its transmission line network in the country.
TCN’s Managing Director, Mr Usman Mohammed, said this on Wednesday on the sideline of the ongoing three-day International Conference on Energy, Power Systems Operations and Planning, ICEPSOP 2020, in Abuja.
The theme of the conference is: “Empowering Micro Grid with Smart Grid Attributes Development in U.S. and Africa’’.
It is organised by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) in collaboration with Howard University, and with support from the National Science Foundation, U.S.
According to Mohammed, the company has about four helicopters that have been put for sale.
“We have advertised them and we have done the evaluation.
“We are going to forward the evaluation to the appropriate authority for approval and once it is approved, we are going to buy other helicopters that will solve our problem.
“There are modern helicopters with fitted gadgets that will help us to identify faults on the lines,‘’ he said.
Mohammed said the power industry was also trying to focus on research to solve the challenges in the sector.
According to him, we have a lot of challenges and there is no difference between researches that are taking place in our universities and the industries.
“We are now trying to focus our researches to the power industry, which means that we are going to support researches, so that they can analyse and help us in solving our power problems,‘’ he said.
