By Obas Esiedesa, Abuja

Niger Delta Power Holding Company has said that it would explore more bilateral agreements for offtakers of its energy stranded at several Power plants across the country.

NDPHC, the largest company by assets, operating in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry, NESI, operates about eight functional power plants with several transmission and distribution substations.

Speaking in Abuja at the company’s end of year celebrations, NDPHC’s Managing Director/CEO, Engr. Jennifer Adighije said the company intends to leverage on the Order issued by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, on bilateral agreements to sell its stranded power.

Engr. Adighije, explained that the company was currently generating in excess of demand from the National Grid, and is now prioritizing direct supply to eligible customers to utilise its excess capacity.

According to her, “We have always had a generation capacity in excess of demand and the demand is coming from the downstream markets.

“So, we must understand that the market is driven by demand which has created a lot of stranded energy for us because we have energy generated in excess of demand.

“But with this new management our strategic would unlock that stranded energy by dedicating significant portions of that energy now to eligible customers and bilateral trading arrangements pursuant to the order July 25th order of the NERC directing us now to trade bilaterally with eligible customers so that should be able to address our stranded capacity”.

She noted that the company has some deals in place with a company offering to offtake 100 Megawatts of power from its plants.

“But we already have a lot of off-takers that have sent expressions of interest like Zenith Point is supposed to off-take about 100 megawatts. We have Function, about 100 megawatts, as well as several other potential PPAs that we are likely to sign in 2025.

“So that would address to a large extent our stranded capacity challenge talking about 2025.”

With the sector, especially, power generation companies facing huge levels of indebtedness, Engr. Adighije, who was appointed Managing Director in August by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, said the new management has been able to recover $4 million from its cross-border bilateral customer CEET Togo.

She explained that the company also secured a firm monthly payment commitment from CEET. It has secured a guaranteed N500 million payment from Eko DisCo following the resolution of a dispute with the utility.

“As you can see, we have also gotten very aggressive after debt recovery from our bilateral customers that were owing us and exposing us to huge amounts of debt. So with these in place we are able to shore up our liquidity and we are looking forward to the journey ahead.”

She added: “The overarching goal of the NDPHC is to achieve and maintain profitability year-on-year through prudent operations and efficient resource allocation. NDPHC will increase actual generation from existing capacity while minimising exposure to NBET (Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc)”.

She said the sector is characterized by cash flow issues across all the sub sectors and across the entire ecosystem with Electricity Distribution Companies, DisCos, claiming to be owed heavily.

She disclosed that NBET has only been able to settle just 35 percent of NDPHC’s N271 billion invoices.