TCN Says Recovery Almost Complete as Power Grid Collapses Twice in 24 Hours

•Describes incident as ‘partial disturbance’

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

Nigeria’s beleaguered power sector yesterday took another major hit, less than 24 hours after it experienced a nationwide blackout, with another grid collapse  disrupting businesses and social activities nationwide.

Tuesday’s incident which happened at about 9:17 am would be about  the seventh time that the country would be experiencing either a grid collapse or partial disturbance this year.

But the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) in a statement in Abuja signed by its General Manager, Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah, stated that the company had begun to restore power in parts of the country and had ‘almost’ completed the process.

“TCN hereby states that the national grid experienced a partial disturbance, on Monday, 14 October, 2024 at about 6:48 pm and notes that efforts to fully recover the grid is still ongoing.

“Although the recovery of the grid commenced immediately, with Azura power station providing the ‘blackstart’, grid recovery reached advanced stages at about 10.24am, today (Tuesday) when it encountered a challenge that caused a slight setback in the recovery process,” the statement added.

The ‘slight’ setback notwithstanding, TCN said it continued with the grid recovery process, which had reached an advanced stage, ensuring bulk power availability to about 90 per cent of its substations nationwide.

“ Supply has  been restored to the Abuja axis and other major distribution load centres nationwide,” it added.

According to the TCN, the partial disturbance did not affect the Ibom Gas generating station which was islanded from the grid, 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.

It explained that an investigation into the cause of the incident will be carried out as soon as the grid is fully restored.

But the electricity Distribution Companies (Discos) announced the shutdown in separate statements on Tuesday, stressing that the grid collapse affected supply within their network.

Earlier, Ikeja Electric confirmed that the national grid collapsed at about 9:17am, affecting power supply within its franchise.

“Please be informed that we experienced another system outage today 15/10/24 at 09:17hrs affecting supply within our network,” the firm said, explaining that it was collaborating with critical stakeholders to restore power supply to its customers.

Also, Eko DisCo assured its customers of collaborating with its partners to fix the issue, pledging to update its customers when power is restored.

“Kindly be informed there was a system collapse at 09:17hrs which has resulted in a loss of power supply across our network. We are currently working with our partners as we hope for speedy restoration of the grid. We will keep you updated as soon as power supply is restored,” the power distributor said.

Despite years of investment in the country’s power sector, the national electricity grid remains very fragile, with little or no ‘shock absorbers’ during fluctuations.

However, the federal government recently carried out a demonstration of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system being built in partnership with the World Bank to help stabilise the national electricity grid.

“By implementing this advanced technology, we are taking a bold step towards addressing some of the issues holding the sector down. The SCADA system will enable us to monitor the entire electricity network from a centralised location, thereby ensuring that we can respond promptly to outages, manage loads efficiently and optimise the overall performance of our power systems.

“With features such as automated data collection, fault detection and remote-controlled operations, we are laying the groundwork for a more resilient and responsive power sector,” Acting Permanent Secretary, Emmanuel Nosike, said recently.