OpeOluwani Akintayo
Lagos — Nigeria’s national power grid has collapsed losing 611 megawatts.
According to the operator of the grid, TCN, the loss took place at two unnamed power stations.
The incident which occurred around 1PM on Monday makes it the second occurrence in less than a month, worsening the blackout being experienced in some parts of Nigeria.
The collapse was confirmed by two of the electricity distribution companies in the country.
Eko Electricity Distribution Company, in a message to its customers on its Facebook page, said, “We regret to inform you of a system collapse on the national grid that’s causing outages across our network.
“We are working with our TCN partners to restore supply as soon as possible. Please bear with us.
Similarly, the Kaduna Electric, said, “We sincerely apologise for the power outage in our franchise states which is due to a system collapse from the national grid. Supply shall be restored as soon as the grid is back up.
“We regret any inconvenience this may cause all our customers.”
Prior to the system collapse, total electricity generation in the country stood at 3,555.6MW as of 6am on Monday, down from 3,789.2MW on Sunday, according to the Nigerian Electricity System Operator.
The grid has continued to suffer system collapse over the years due to lack of spinning reserve.
Spinning reserve is the generation capacity that is online but unloaded and that can respond within 10 minutes to compensate for generation or transmission outages.
Findings showed that the five power stations meant to provide spinning reserves had not been doing this for years.
According to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, a total system collapse means total blackout nationwide, while partial system collapse is a failure of a section of the grid.
NERC had in its report for the third quarter of 2017 highlighted the need for adequate proactive measure (adequate spinning reserves) to prevent the system from being destabilised.
It said at the time that it was determined to provide all regulatory intervention necessary to ensure that the TCN procured sufficient spinning reserves.
