Kano State Government says it plans to complete one of its two hydro power plants in Tiga, for electricity generation by October 2020.
Mr Mu’azu Magaji, the state’s Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure, said this on Wednesday in Kano.
Magaji said the 10 megawatt power plant will ease power problems facing residents and industries in the state when completed.
He said that the project had reached about 90 per cent completion, saying that the second plant was the Chalawa hydro electricity project, which was supposed to have gone concurrently with the first one.
“Our industries have gone under and they have stopped working largely because the cost of production is highly influenced by power supply availability in the state.
“The state has made lots of efforts to develop its own hydro electricity plants, and after several efforts and learning processes with lots of expensive mistakes, we have now come to basically master the act of delivering the project.
“We are on the verge of completing the first phase of the project in Tiga, it will be one of the first successful state hydro electricity projects that has been delivered across the country.
“We are aiming to complete the project in October 2020, obviously we will also be able to deliver power to our water treatment plants in Tamburawa and Chalawa.
“We are planning to supply the metropolitan street lights from the first project which is at final stage of completion.Every single installation has been dry tested and have all functioned 100 per cent,’’ Magaji said.
He said what was left was the transmission lines.
“The transmission lines will run from the hydro power plant down to Panshekara, in Kumbotso Local Government Area (LGA) of the state,” he said.
The Commissioner explained that the second project in Chalawa was started together with the first one.
“Unfortunately, the scope changed because of regulatory issues from the Federal Ministry of Water Resources.
“As at then, there were scoping issues related to water management. The dam was meant for irrigation and for municipal water supply.
“But, when we came up to build the hydro power plant, we were restricted by the scope and size of the power we can generate.
“Unfortunately, a lot of work has been done in coordinating and ordering the equipment before the issue came up. We ended up with the hydro power turbines that do not fit the allowable specifications given to us by the Federal Government,’’ he said.
