Kano-Katsina 330kV line advances with its transformers already waiting on site

Nigeria’s transmission company is building a 330kV substation close to the Katsina Steel Rolling Company, at the end of a Kano line it calls the largest of its kind in the country. Minister of Power Joseph Tegbe has named the Chinese contractors lined up behind the Presidential Power Initiative and the Zungeru evacuation project.

Close to the Katsina Steel Rolling Company, the Transmission Company of Nigeria is building the 330kV substation that will receive the Kano-Katsina transmission line, and the power transformers for it have already arrived and are stored on site, according to TCN’s managing director, Sule Abdulaziz, who spoke to journalists in Katsina on the sidelines of a northern youth stakeholders’ conference.

TCN describes the line from Kano as the largest transmission project of its kind in Nigeria. Elsewhere in Katsina State it is building a second line from Katsina to Malumfashi, with substations under development at four locations along the route.

Land has been secured at Mashi for a further substation, which TCN will begin once land compensation has been paid, and at Kankia a major transformer is installed and connected, waiting to be commissioned in the presence of the Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe.

Abdulaziz called the Katsina works “significant investments by the Federal Government in Katsina’s electricity infrastructure”, built to give industry and small businesses in the North-West a stronger transmission network to draw on.

At national level, Tegbe set out the contractors behind the next phase of grid work at a programme in Abuja on 22 September marking his first 100 days in office. CMEC, he said, had reaffirmed its role in the 1.9GW Presidential Power Initiative, with the first transmission lines under it due in the first quarter of 2027.

TBEA has committed to a proposed $500 million industrial park for manufacturing power equipment and to a three-year timetable for the East-West Super Grid, according to the minister, and CNEEC has advanced financing for the $116 million Zungeru power evacuation project, with approval targeted before the end of the year.

HengFei Cables is to supply cable for the second phase of the Presidential Power Initiative and has proposed a cable assembly plant and training centre in Nigeria, while a cooperation agreement signed with Huawei Technologies covers grid digitalisation and an assessment of gaps in SCADA coverage.

Tegbe said the ministry’s first 100 days under him had gone into stabilising the existing system, which he described to the Abuja audience as “the essential first stage of expansion”.