Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has announced that the nation’s power grid, which partially collapsed on Wednesday, was fully restored within 45 minutes, the fastest in the country’s history.
Data record of the partial system collapse from the company also showed that during the period the development lasted, the TCN succeeded in keeping the power supply at the South-eastern axis intact, saving it from experiencing an outage.
The Acting Managing Director of TCN, Mr Sule Abdulaziz, who confirmed the swift recovery of the grid, when he spoke in Abuja during a briefing, stressed that officials of the Independent System Operators (ISO), an arm of the TCN, moved in quickly to salvage the situation.
He added that it was only the second in eight months that the grid experienced the system disturbance as against the incessant collapses before the new administration at the wholly owned government company.
He said: “We had one system collapse earlier and the one of yesterday (Wednesday) which was partial collapse. It was the second time the grid was experiencing system disturbance in the last eight months; this has never been the case in the power sector history.”
Abdulaziz stated that the development was coming at a time the national electricity grid had increased in the capacity of energy it delivers to consumers, adding that all the players in the industry were working round the clock to ensure improved services and zero grid collapses.
“I can assure you that stakeholders in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) are working really hard to improve services for electricity consumers and build on the achievements we have made so far. For instance, I can confirm that the grid recovered from the latest system collapse in just 45 minutes.
“This shows that the commitment of President Muhammadu Buhari and the Minister of Power, Sale Mamman, towards bequeathing an improved power sector to Nigeria is working. We are working hard towards zero system collapse.” he said.
According to him, the company’s engineers are currently executing projects in several parts of the country to further improve bulk power capacity delivery to Nigerians.
Abdulaziz noted that at the moment, for instance, officials of TCN are working on the replacement of corroded glass disc insulators on Tower 425 of Ikeja West to Osogbo 330 kilovolt (kV) line, while one of the company’s contractors is also “reconductoring” the Kebbi-Sokoto transmission line.
He also said that the TCN has delivered another 60/66MVA power transformer to Kumbotso Substation in Kano while a 30MVA mobile transformer has been moved to the new Bichi substation in the state to further increase the bulk power available for distribution.
“This same week, a 60/66MVA power transformer was delivered to the Kubwa substation in Abuja and our engineers are carrying out the installation.
“By the time, it is completed, the power wheeling capacity of Kubwa substation will increase significantly, although, we are meeting the demands of the distribution load centre at present,” Abdulaziz stressed.
