Power Flow Analysis of the Enhanced Proposed 330kVTransmission Network of the Nigeria Grid

Abstract

The Nigeria’s power sector transmission infrastructure continues to be challenged as it still remainsthe weak link in the electricity supply chain. The Nigerian Federal Government on its Roadmap forpower sector reform highlighted that to accommodate the planned increase in generation capacity, therewas need for a 30% increase in the “true deliverable” transmission capacity of the country’s 330kVnetwork. But the technical feasibility of this plan is an issue to be considered.In this work, the existing 330kV Nigeria transmission network was expanded by the introduction of newlines and power stations, simulation was carried out and the effect was analyzed using Newton-Raphsonalgorithm in ETAP 12.6. The base case operating condition as obtained from the power flow on which thevarious transfer cases were implemented, gives a fair generation and loading pattern of the Nigeriangrid. The total installed generating capacity of the base case considered was 11,948MW out of which4,347.21MW was available for load level of 3,633.6MW. Result shows that the maximum load ability ofthe enhanced network was increased to 238.4% compared with the existing network when the Newton –Raphson iteration method was applied.