TCN restores powers to Birnin Kebbi, after weeks of outages due to fire on Birnin-Kebbi substation
Oredola Adeola
After a fire outbreak at the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) Birnin-Kebbi substation, Kebbi State, which led to a system collapse of the national grid supply, the TCN has restored bulk power supply to Birnin Kebbi and its environs through the Birnin Kebbi substation on Friday, September 29, 2023, after weeks of blackouts.
Ndidi Mbah, General Manager, TCN Public Affairs, disclosed this in a statement released at the weekend.
According to her power supply was first restored to Sokoto State through the 132kV Kaduna-Zaria-Funtua-Gusau-Talatan Mafara line on September 15, 2023, and subsequently on Friday, September 29, power supply has also been restored to the Birnin Kebbi town and environs.
She said, “The bulk power restoration work was carried out by a team of substation, lines, and PC&M engineers of TCN, who converged from different TCN regions nationwide, to ensure expedited repair works and that bulk power was quickly restored to Kebbi and environs in spite of the enormity of the fire incident and its effect on the substation.
“The team of engineers who also conveyed the needed material from the regional stores to Birnin Kebbi Substation worked tirelessly round the clock to restore supply through the 150MVA and 60MVA transformers unaffected by the fire incident,” Mbah said.
She however emphasised that work is ongoing to equally connect the 132kV Birnin Kebbi – Sokoto line that will enable TCN to transmit additional bulk electricity to Sokoto State and its environs.
Mbah therefore assured TCN’s commitment to pursuing the network expansion projects and will continue to work hard to ensure the continued improvement of the nation’s transmission grid.
Apart from the fire incident that was observed on the Birnin-Kebbi substation on September 14, two separate fire explosions also occurred on Kainji/Jebba 330kV line 2 (Cct K2J) blue phase CVT and Blue phase line Isolator of Kainji/Jebba 330kV line1.
Adebayo Adelabu, Minister of Power, in a recent statement made during inspection tour of the National Control Centre facilities in Osogbo and the Osogbo sub-regional office of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), claimed that the government has initiated an investigation to ascertain the circumstances that led to the fire outbreak at the TCN Sub-station facility in Kebbi State.
He claimed that the destruction of transformers valued at millions of Naira, threatening that if the investigations revealed any acts of sabotage, culprits would face the full force of the law.
