TCN confirms restoration of electricity grid from partial collapse
Story from Abah ADAH, Abuja
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has confirmed that a partial collapse suffered by the national power grid at about 1 pm on Monday which had to plunge some parts of the country into darkness has been fixed.
According to a statement signed by the company’s General Manager, Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah, “the incident followed a sudden drop in system frequency from 50.18Hz to 47.63Hz that caused system instability and consequently the collapse of a part of the national grid.
READ ALSO: Nationwide blackout: TCN confirms collapse of national grid
“However, the partial system disturbance did not affect parts of the grid such as Afam Complex, Alaoji, Ikot Ekpene, Odukpani, and Calabar axis, which means that electricity supply to these areas was not interrupted by the incident,” the statement said.
The statement noted that reports from the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) readings and some substations, control panel readings by System Operators showed that some units from a particular generating station tripped suddenly, causing an initial loss of 402 megawatts (MW) from the grid network. This caused a destabilising imbalance, which further caused the pulling out of a total of 3,560MW from the grid that finally collapsed part of the national grid.
TCN, according to the statement, commenced the immediate recovery of the grid at 1:19 pm through Shiroro Generating Station and almost immediately restored electricity to the Abuja axis. The Alaoji – Onitsha axis was restored at about the same time as Abuja, while the Shiroro – Mando axis, on the other hand, was restored by 3.42 pm. By 6.57 pm Monday, the national grid was fully recovered and operational.
While appreciating the understanding of government and electricity consumers within the affected areas, TCN said it is consistently executing projects geared towards putting in place a very robust grid, adding that it is equally pursuing a nationwide SCADA implementation that would further contribute to grid stability.
Neptune Prime reports that this is the fifth time partial or major grid collapse is experienced in 2021. On February 17, the national grid experienced a partial collapse leading to power outages in some parts of Nigeria including Lagos. In March, the country suffered extensive power outages when 18 plants accounting for most of the electricity the country generates faced operational problems. In May, Nigeria experienced another system collapse that resulted in a blackout in parts of the country. Grid failure was also reported in July.
And there are indications that the country may not have seen the end to the power system collapse as many problems, including ageing transmission network, obsolete substation equipment, and poor distribution network persist.
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