Nationwide outages: DisCos receive 90MW, as system collapse occurs
… GenCos generates 4,091.60MW
Oredola Adeola
The Nigeria electricity grid system has again collapsed as the Transmission Company of Nigeria struggled to transmit 90MegaWatts of electricity out of a total 4,091.60MW generated as of 1pm, Wednesday, July 20,2022.
This was obtained by EnergyDay from data released by the Nigeria System Operator in its daily operational report for the period under review.
The new development however resulted in outages in Lagos, Abuja, Kaduna and other parts of the country. The system failure is happening after the last nationwide outage which occurred on Sunday June 12, 2022.
As of 1pm on Wednesday the eleven(11) electricity distribution companies (DISCOs) received about 90MW.
The data showed that at 1pm, only Abuja DisCo received 40MegaWatts, being the highest load allocation, followed by Kaduna and Ibadan DisCos that received 20MW and 10MW respectively. Benin DisCo also received 20MW.
The allocation to other DisCos were Ikeja DisCo(0MW), EKO DisCo (0MW), Jos DisCo (0MW), Enugu DisCo (0MW), Kano DisCo (0MW), Port Harcourt DisCo (0MW) and Yola DisCo (0MW).
EnergyDay further gathered that all the operational power plants as at the period of filling this report generated 4,091.60MegaWatt (MW) of electricity into the grid, out of which about 90MW of electricity was transmitted to the DisCos, leaving about 4001.6MW unaccounted for within the transmission network.
DISCOS REACT
Eko Electricity in a statement on its official website said, “Dear Customers, we regret to inform you of a system collapse on the National grid at precisely 11:27am today, Wednesday July 20th.
The DisCo claimed that it is working with the Transmission Company of Nigeria(TCN) to ascertain the cause of the collapse and a possible restoration timeline. It however promised to keep its customers updated on the situation.
Kaduna Electricity in a statement by AbdulAzeez Abdullahi, Head of Corporate Communication,informed the DisCo that power failure being experienced on its network was as a result of National grid collapse which occurred at 11:08am on Wednesday.
He said, “We hereby assure our esteemed customers of restoration of normal power supply as soon as TCN restores supply.”
Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution company(KEDCO) also described the outage as being caused by system collapse from the national grid.
PHED said, “This has affected our entire network and impacted on our inability to deliver adequate supply.”
TCN GIVES REASONS
Ndidi Mbah, TCN General Manager, Public Affairs, did not respond to calls as of the period of filing this report.
EnergyDay gathered that TCN had on Monday issued a statement notifying all DisCos that power supply will drop by 50 megawatts on Wednesday.
The TCN said the drop would be as a result of planned annual “preventive maintenance” on the line bay at Lekki Transmission Substation in Lagos.
EnergyDay gathered that during the maintenance period, about 50MW will be interrupted, affecting power supply to Lekki phase 1, Oniru, Elegushi, Waterfront, Igbo Efon and Twenty-first Century Estate in Lagos state.
“TCN regrets all inconvenience this might cause electricity consumers in the affected area,” the statement said.
