Again, the national grid has experienced another disturbance or partial collapse seventy-two hours after the first one occurred on Tuesday.
This latest one has sent a larger population of consumers into a sudden darkness.
Data obtained from the Nigerian system operator’s portal showed that the grid recorded zero megawatts (MW) as of Thursday.
Generation of power dropped from 3,743MW at 10am to 2,709MW at 11am and by noon the grid only recorded 3.70MW and by 1 pm the grid recorded 4.10MW.
Although, no statement had been obtained by the grid managers——-Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), the distribution companies had raised alarm over their frustration in distributing electricity to consumers.
Ikeja Electric Distribution Company (IKEDC), in its statement, said that it is experiencing a system outage affecting its supply.
It pleaded with its consumers affected by the development to bear with it.
“Please be informed that we are experiencing a system outage today 07 November, 2024 at 11:29Hrs affecting supply within our network,” IKEDC said.
Recall that the recent partial disturbance is the 10th this year with four disturbances happening back-back last week and this week.
Recall that on Tuesday, this week,
as at 2:35pm, hourly generation readings showed that none of the power generation companies had a single megawatt.
But the TCN quickly reacted, saying that the national grid experienced a partial disturbance about 1;52 pm.
This, it said, followed a series of lines and generators’ trippings that caused instability of the grid and, consequently, the partial disturbance of the system.
“The data from the National Control Centre (NCC) revealed that a part of the grid was not affected by the bulk power disruption.
“TCN engineers are already working to quickly restore bulk power supply to the states affected by the partial disturbance. Presently, bulk power supply has been restored to Abuja, at 2.49pm, and we are gradually restoring to other parts of the country.
“We sincerely apologise for every inconvenience this may cause our electricity customers” General Manager, Public Affairs, TCN, Ndidi Mbah, said
In his remarks on the grid collapse, the Managing Director of TCN, Engineer Sule Abdulazeez, had on October 29, 2024, at an emergency meeting with the press in Abuja, promised to deploy technical knowhow towards phasing out obsolete equipment with a view to stabilising the national grid.
“We are doing everything possible to make sure that the grid becomes stable. But this cannot happen in one day. There are equipment that are outdated, which we need to change.
“There are some communications equipment also, which will help put them in order before we can achieve all these. But I’m assuring you that we are not relenting. We are working to make sure that the national grid is one of the best.” he assured.
Speaking further on how to protect the transition installations from activities of vandals, the MD said that the company has concluded arrangements to procure helicopters and other gadgets to monitor the equipment
He recalled that there are helicopters that TCN used to patrol the lines in case there were faults. But with the creation of TCN, all those choppers are no longer in use.
