It was around 8:30 am when a total of twelve people filed into the rented bus ready for our journey to the largest power generating company in Nigeria, Egbin Power Station. As the journey started we all bowed our heads in prayer for the lord to grant us Journey mercies. Everyone was excited as most of us had not been to the power station and the prospect of what knowledge we could gain from this trip. Armed with our phones ( and laptops )earphones and some snacks the journey began. Some of us had began to put our earphones in our ears as we had heard that it would be a long journey while others were prepping themselves to sleep. We made a quick stop to pick up one of our mentors. Some of us remained awake chatting, playing games, being silly generally having fun.
After a long two and a half hours journey we had finally arrived at the Egbin Power Station. We had to take care of a few entry requirements but soon we were officially inside. We marvelled at the sight of the huge expanse of land that the power plant occupied. The large cylindrical storage tanks stood tall
and intimidating to the left and the beautiful blue sea lay to the right and at the distance the silhouette of where our journey started lay.
We entered the main building and was briefed quickly on the safety rules before a Mr Kenneth Yashim
who was an Instrumentation and Control System engineer gave us a brief rundown of the power plant and proceeded to take us on a tour of the plant. He explained quite a couple of thing a few are mentioned below:
The power plant is a plant that makes use of steam to turn turbines. Water brought up from a well is heated to 536 celsius to produce dry steam. The Steam is not moist as the water is super heated. The High temperature steam at high pressure now turns the turbine. A Turbine is a shaft like rod which rotates generator. Dry steam is used instead of moist steam to prevent corrosion of the metal blades of the turbine.
But before the water can be used it has to go through a water treatment plant and
demineralization plant. It is from this demineralized water that the water used in the work spaces are taken from.
It was explained to us that the power plant can generate 1320 megawatts of energy in installed power 220 megawatts per steam turbine although because of the amount of power demanded by the transmission company they do not produce according to their capacity instead they produce less.
Then he showed us the steam turbines and took us to the control room where he explained in details the power generation process. Soon our tour was over and we sadly had to leave after we took a few pictures with the sea as our backdrop. And off the bus drove the plant getting smaller behind us while our mind was instilled with new memories.
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