Siji's Bulletproof Plan to Solve Electricity in Nigeria Once & For All
Posted by Mesmorino in Electrical Engineering, Nigeria, Power Supply
This was very coherent and organised in my head but that was four or five hours ago, so deal with it.
Solar Power is the future. You build a huge mirror farm, angled to follow the sun and reflect light onto a tower. The resultant energy is used to boil water and generate electricity. You now have your first power station. Being brand new and rated to be able to supply at least one state, you connect it to the grid and set it as spinning reserve, so that it'll take the load when PCHN (inevitably) drops the ball. It should pick up the slack for as many states as is energy efficient, and cost effective. This is a patch, and we don't want our patch to fail. Of course, you build as many of the power stations as needed to make the patch work. Just as long as you bear in mind that it's just a stop gap solution.
So while you have a more stable supply, you get to work on several more (solar!) power stations. According to wikipedia, the UK has 181 large power stations generating about 80GW, so when i say several, i mean hundreds (load forecasting will give you a ballpark figure here, but feel free to go nuts). This new batch of stations will be the foundations of the new National Grid, so you take your time to build substations and lay down some pipe- er, i mean cable. You do a thorough job here, so much so that even the Fulani nomad with his cattle herd can charge his cell phone at the next oasis. No point having all that juice if everybody can't drink some of it, right? So you wire up everybody. You install infrastructure, from the ground up. Meters, transformers, generators, the works.
This will take decades (hopefully just one, but you know Nigerians) so while all this building is going on, start a publicity campaign. Absolutely blitz the masses- POWER IS COMING TO NIGERIA IN 20XX! Hire models if you have to. Hire translators if you have to. Just make sure the entire country knows what's up, that they have the right mindset: No more tapping electricity from overhead wires. No more generators or having to buy the diesel for them. No more secondary circuit systems for the house (one for gen, one for nepa lol). Pay for your electricity by card or cash at the bank, into the Grid's account. When the doubters, detractors and saboteurs raise their ugly heads, you point to the patch you built earlier, which should have drastically reduced the black outs and brown outs. It should also have increased power quality, but that's just a bonus. Then you tell the naysayers to sit down and shut up. When the first of the N-Series (N for Naija, naturally :P) power station comes online, you throw a big launch (most definitely not an 'owambe' party!), you let everyone know that if they thought you were joking before then homie, this shit just got real.
So all the power stations are online. There's power all day every day. You've set your price reasonably (although let's face it, most people would be willing to pay more as long as they had a steady supply. You're really just buying goodwill by setting fair prices). Now it's time to go sort out the old infrastructure. You decommission your patch, and since you now have a new, independent grid, you are free to either dismantle or rejuvenate the old power stations. At this point, i'd rather decommission the old equipment, and keep the patch. Being more recent, it should be relatively easier to integrate it into the grid, and you can sell the surplus- Profit for you! Now you have to protect your investment, but that part should be relatively simple- Why on earth would anybody want to shut down a power station, you ask? Well I doubt they'd miss the dark ages that much, but there's always that one crazy person isn't there? And you know nigerians, as soon as one of the power stations goes offline and you have a black out for 5minutes, everybody will panic and decry your new system and wonder why they ever bothered and they should have stuck to their deisel generators, yada yada. I'm joking, i'm joking!. Anyway, you protect your investment by investing heavily in competent staff to man the stations. If you need physical protection, well, employ guards. As an aside, this whole project will create jobs like crazy.
Since nothing in life is ever simple, this comes with some caveats:
This would have to be a government operation from the get go. The initial costs are something that only a government could afford. But hell, what are taxes for anyway? They sure as hell aren't going towards any form of civic amenities! So- Government funded project on government land (So there are no disputes about anything). Also, the government might (or probably will) have to run the project at a massive loss, but considering the pay off... I'd say it was worth it. Also, the government can help with protection- All the power stations will be government installations, so they might as well have the military guarding them. It's not like Nigeria's fighting any wars or something.
My mom also reminded me that it's all political so naturally, no matter how brilliant the proposal is, somebody would find a reason not to do it. So, find somebody who is prepared to back you all the way to the bank. You don't need funding (since it's government funded) but you do need friends. If your Godfather can get the right person to listen to you, then his job's done. Don't get bogged down in where to site the stations: When they say to put one in Maiduguri, just to represent, tell them "piss off mate, my losses will be astronomical!" Don't worry, your fellow engineers will know what you're talking about.
She had a few other points as well but i've forgotten what they were- I'm looking at this as an engineering problem, not a social or political one. Those i'll leave to smarter folk. And before anyone jumps on me for presuming to know everything, I just want to say i'm trying to help. While I'm not particularly patriotic, (i mean like Nigeria as much as a guy can like a country) i sure do want it to be as great as it can possibly be. This is just an idea i've had for a while now, and today it solidified.
Share this if you like it, and Happy Independence Day