The Azura-Edo Power Station is a natural gas powered electricity generation plant, with a current operational capacity of 461 megawatts, located in Benin City in Nigeria.
Location
The power station is located to the northwest of Benin City in Edo State, approximately, by road, east of Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital. This location lies approximately, by road, southwest of Abuja, the country's capital city.
Overview
The Azura-Edo Power Station is often referred to as the "Azura-Edo Independent Power Plant" or because the finance required to build the plant was sourced from the private sector ; the private sector owners of the plant took the construction risk; and the operational risks are also borne by the plant's owners and their operations & maintenance contractors. The majority equity investor in the Azura-Edo IPP is , a private equity firm headquartered in London with $7.8 billion under management. Until it was spun off in 2004, it was part of the UK Government’s CDC Group; and this heritage is still reflected in the fact that many of the investors in its funds consist of European and US government development finance institutions. The minority equity investors in the plant are
In addition to the IFC, the other two arms of the World Bank are also major stakeholders in the project through the provision, respectively, of partial risk guarantees and political risk insurance. The Azura-Edo IPP is an open-cycle gas fired power plant. Construction of the plant began in January 2016 under an Engineering, Procurement and Construction contract with a consortium comprising Siemens AG, Siemens Nigeria Ltd, and Julius Berger Nigeria Ltd. Siemens was also the provider of the major items of power generating equipment. The plant was completed on the 30th April 2018, six months ahead of schedule. Nearly 5 million man-hours of labour were expended on the plant, without a single lost-time injury, and the names of all the developers and construction workers are now inscribed on a brass plaque at the front of the plant's admin and control building. During its first two years of operations, the Azura-Edo IPP produced just over 8 per cent of all the power delivered to the Nigerian grid and its performance - hourly, daily, weekly and monthly - is visible to the general public via the company's app.
