From Isaac Anumihe, Abuja
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has reported yet another partial grid collapse, the seventh in 2024.
Despite this recurring challenge, TCN’s General Manager of Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah, reassured Nigerians that the company is working relentlessly to restore the grid.
Recovery efforts, she stated, are already well underway, with substantial progress made.
Mbah emphasised that while these disruptions are concerning, TCN remains committed to strengthening the grid’s stability and ensuring that such disturbances are minimized in the future.
Although the recovery of the grid commenced immediately, with Azura Power Station providing the blackstart, grid recovery reached advanced stages around 10:24 a.m. today, when it encountered a challenge that caused a slight setback in the recovery process.
Mbah said in a statement that despite the slight setback, TCN continued with the grid recovery process, which has now reached an advanced stage, ensuring bulk power availability to about 90 percent of its substations nationwide. Supply, she said, has been restored to the Abuja axis and other major distribution load centres nationwide.
Meanwhile, she noted, the partial disturbance did not affect the Ibom Gas Generating Station, which was islanded from the grid yesterday and continued to supply areas in the South-Southern part of the country such as Eket, Ekim, Uyo, and Itu 132kV transmission substations during the period.
Investigation into the cause of the incident will be carried out as soon as the grid is fully restored, she said.
On Thursday, March 28, the system collapsed around 16:28 hours. The national electricity grid, centrally managed from Osogbo, Osun State, suffered a collapse at 4:30 p.m.
Data from TCN’s generation trend showed the grid collapsed around 4 p.m. on Thursday and dropped from 2,984 megawatts (MW) to zero in an hour, with all 21 plants connected to the grid ceasing operations by 5 p.m.
On Monday, April 15, the national grid collapsed as a fire erupted at the Afam V, 330kV busbar coupler, leading to the tripping of units at Afam III and Afam VI. This resulted in a sudden generation loss of 25MW and 305MW respectively, destabilising the grid, TCN said in a statement.
On Saturday, July 16, the power plants contributing to the grid began to shut down from around 2 p.m., declining to 2,797.16MW. It further shrank to 1,020.08MW around 3 p.m. before drastically falling to 80MW by 4 p.m. At 6:07 p.m. on Saturday, power generation had dipped to just 57 megawatts, a significant fall from the almost 4,000MW recorded earlier around 8 a.m. Yet, on Monday, August 5, the grid collapsed, with data from TCN’s generation trend showing that the grid collapsed around 1:30 p.m. on Monday and dropped from 3,241 megawatts (MW) to 1,255MW in an hour.
A UK-trained grid expert, Dr Idowu Oyebanjo, said that the use of sustainable electricity systems could have prevented the unfortunate collapses of the national grid.
“Generally speaking, there are innovative and sustainable grid power reliability schemes that have become recently available in the world of power systems that Nigeria can deploy to improve grid reliability, and thus save millions of homes and businesses the agony of incessant grid collapse,” he said.