French firm to train Nigerian engineers

A French renewable energy company, Vergnet, has announced its plan to train six Nigerian engineers on wind farm technology, to boost the completion of the company’s projects in the country.

Sylvain Dubail, Wind Farm Operations Director in the company, made this known when a group of journalists from Nigeria visited the company’s headquarters at Orleans, France.

He said that the six engineers would become the pioneer team of engineers on wind farm technology in the country.

Dubail said that the company was about to complete the electrification of the Katsina Wind Project, before a French expatriate was kidnapped in 2012 at the site.

“Although our staff was released in 2013, we have lost all our vital documents on the farm at Rim during the attack.

“We should be discouraged with the incident, but we had to find a way around the challenge to finishing the project,” he said.

The director said that the company had decided to adopt the system of using indigenous engineers to finish the work with approval of the Federal Ministry of Power.

He said that the six engineers would become the pioneer team of engineers on wind farm technology in the country.

“The training is expected to start in June and the engineers will be trained for the first session; while they will do the auditing of the machine in August and September.

“The commissioning of the machine will be between November, 2014 and April, 2015; while the final handing over of the project to the Federal Ministry of Power will be in April, 2015,” he said.

The maintenance of the wind farm will be from May 2015 to April 2017. He noted that the company would do the supervision and maintenance of the project with the six engineers.

He said the security challenge might be an advantage for the company to train and partner with Nigerian engineers on wind farm technology.

“It will be like the oil sector where we have so many Nigerians who are experts in the sector now. Also, the engineers will be become experts in producing wind panels.”

The plant consist 37 units of wind turbines with a rated power of 275 kilowatts.

Meanwhile the company is about to sign an agreement with the Osun Government next month, on the construction of 13 megawatts solar farm.

Sylvain Charrier, the company’s Business Manager in Charge of Asia and Africa, stated this in his presentation on “Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Project in Osun: On the way to its realisation.”