By Straightnews
Nigerians batter blackout as the National Power Grid has ‘scored’ a hattrick collapse in one week.
Power generation went off around 8:16 a.m. on Saturday, October 19. with many states reporting total blackouts.
The GenCos generate power and supply it to the national grid managed by the TCN. The transmission company transmits the power from the grid to its substations, which deliver to DisCos at a lower voltage and then to homes.
Recall that the grid tripped off on Monday and on Tuesday this week and then it was restored.
At 8 a.m, power generation was 3,042 megawatts and peaked at 3,968MW at 7 a.m. However, it dropped to 47MW as of 9 a.m.
Related news: National Grid Collapses a Fourth Time In 2024
Data obtained from the Nigerian System Operator’s portal (niggrid.org), revealed that the grid recorded an unprecedented zero Megawatts (MW) as of 8:16 am today.
Data showed that all 22 generation companies (GenCos) are down as of the time of this report.
The grid had collapsed twice this week, marking the eighth grid disturbance in 2024.
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) had yet to confirm the incident at the time of this report, leaving Nigerians in the dark as to the reason behind this round of blackout.
On February 4, Nigeria experienced its first blackout of 2024 when the national grid collapsed at approximately 11:51 AM. The TCN-managed grid saw its capacity plummet from 2,407 megawatts to just 31MW by noon, and it completely shut down by 1 PM.
Nigerians batter blackout
Meanwhile, Omoyele Sowore, the 2023 Presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC, )wrote ‘‘The Nigerian National Electricity Grid has experienced a distressing trifecta -HAT TRICK- with three dramatic collapses occurring in quick succession over the course of just two weeks.’’
@YeleSowore said ‘‘The NATIONAL GRID needs to be put on WATCHLIST the same way they’ve kept me on the Nigerian Immigration’s WATCHLIST! Useless people!’’
NEFERTITI in X ‘‘Peter Obi financed a trip to Egypt to study their National Electricity Grid. But charlatans laughed & made caricature of a very important gesture. Today, your national grid has collapsed more than 10x since Asiwaju’s inauguration.
National Grid Restored
Later in the evening, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) says the national grid that collapsed at about 8.15am on Saturday October 19, had been restored.
According to a statement released, TCN blamed the recent collapse on an explosion at the bus section of a current transformer at the 330-kilovolt (kV) Jebba transmission substation, Niger state.
In the statement signed by its General Manager Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah, TCN said following the explosion that occurred, the commission activated a protection system, which promptly opened the busbars to curtail the explosion.
“The Transmission Company of Nigeria hereby states that the national grid experienced a temporary disturbance at about 8:15am, today, 19th Oct. 2024.
According to the report from the NCC, the bus section of a current transformer exploded at 330kV Jebba Transmission Substation and as expected, the protection system was activated, and this promptly opened the busbars to curtail the explosion, thereby preventing outbreak of fire and further damage to adjacent equipment.
The action of the protection system led to a temporary disturbance on the grid. Our engineers at Jebba have successfully carried out switchings, isolating the faulty current transformer. They have equally reconfigured the busbar arrangement, restoring power supply to the station, and other parts of the grid.” the statement read
The system failure earlier today was the third time in a week and the eighth time in 2024.
