The Niger Delta Power Holding Company has officially commenced the restoration of the 225-megawatt Gbarain Power Plant in Bayelsa State, more than five years after a devastating fire destroyed the facility’s Power Control Module and stalled its planned commissioning.

NDPHC’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Jennifer Adighije, led the company’s management team in issuing the Notice to Proceed and formally handing over the project site to a joint venture between TILT Energy Limited and Schneider Electric, tasked with replacing the burnt component.

The plant, developed under the National Integrated Power Project programme and strategically located close to the Gbarain-Ubie gas processing facilities, has remained out of service since November 2020, when fire ravaged the Power Control Module just months before the facility was due to be commissioned.

NDPHC’s General Manager of Generation Projects, Ginsau Idris, described the damage as extensive enough to make full replacement unavoidable, while the company’s Executive Director for Generation, Abdullahi Kassim, called the incident a major setback that had left the project in limbo for years. Kassim disclosed that complementary infrastructure, including access roads and support buildings, is also under construction as part of the wider restoration effort.

Adighije said the Gbarain plant was singled out as a “low-hanging fruit” capable of delivering a quick boost to Nigeria’s electricity generation capacity, adding that her team secured the necessary approvals and funding in record time after years of technical, contractual, and administrative bottlenecks had held up the project. She commended the resilience of the project team in pushing the restoration to the execution stage and stressed that NDPHC would maintain zero tolerance for delays going forward.

On behalf of the contractors, TILT Energy’s Managing Director, Deji Awodeji, assured stakeholders that the joint venture would deliver the rehabilitation within its 12-month contract window, and possibly ahead of schedule, without compromising quality or safety standards.

Once completed, the restored plant is expected to add significant generation capacity to the national grid, improve electricity supply, and support industrial growth in the Niger Delta region, in line with the Federal Government’s broader push to shore up power generation under its Renewed Hope Agenda.

The project forms part of a wider NDPHC strategy under Adighije’s leadership to recover stranded and underutilised generation assets across its portfolio of power stations nationwide.