By Charles Ebi and ABAH ADAH, Abuja
For the umpteenth time the national power grid once again, yesterday suffered another collapse plunging the country into widespread darkness.
Reports indicate that this marks the tenth grid collapse in 2024, an unprecedented frequency of such incidents.
Moreover, this is the second system failure in less than two days.
Several electricity distribution companies, including Ikeja Electric and Eko DisCo, confirmed the latest collapse in separate circulars issued on Thursday.
As has been the case with previous collapses, the Transmission Company of Nigeria ,TCN, has yet to release a statement addressing the situation.
The last communication from TCN noted efforts to restore the grid, only for it to collapse twice following that announcement.
A statement from Ikeja Electric and Eko DisCo informed its customers: “Dear Esteemed Customer,
“Please be informed that we experienced a system outage today November 7, 2024 at 11:29Hrs affecting supply within our network.
“Restoration of supply is ongoing in collaboration with our critical stakeholders.
“Kindly bear with us. Signed: Management”.
In October that Nigeria’s national grid collapsed three times within a month, resulting in a nationwide blackout.
Several electricity distribution companies ,DisCos, confirmed the recent collapse through official circulars.
In response to the incident, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission ,NERC, announced that a public hearing would be conducted to investigate the causes of the collapse.
The Minister of Power acknowledged that grid collapses are inevitable, citing that various factors could lead to the tripping of transmission lines, which in turn results in the failure of the entire system.
However, Adelabu disclosed that the government is working on measures to reduce the frequency of grid collapses.
Earlier this week, two grid collapses occurring within a span of 24 hours.
By October 2024, the grid had experienced eight collapses, significantly disrupting power supply nationwide and pushing businesses to rely on self-powered generators to maintain operations.
To date, the grid has collapsed ten times this year, with multiple failures occurring in a single month.
Cases of grid collapse, disturbance or partial collapse has has been rampant in recent times, thrown parts of, and in some cases the entire country into darkness before remediation.
AljazirahNigeria recall that the first major blackout of this year occurred on February 4, 2024, when the grid’s capacity plummeted from 2,407 megawatts to a mere 31 MW by midday, hitting zero shortly after.
The grid has since then continued to falter, with subsequent breakdowns on August 5 and three times in October.
Notably, the October 14 collapse was followed by a partial failure the next day, after which another disturbance occurred on October 19.
Statutorily, TCN which wheels bulk power from the generation end to the distribution end is the custodian and manager of the grid for now. But experts have said that collapse from the grid could be a fallout of the failure of any of the the sub-sectors in the value chain.
AljazirahNigeria also reports that Thursday’s collapse occurred barely 24 hours after a committee set up by the federal government to investigate the recent grid collapse submitted its report.
The committee, which is headed by the Executive Director of System Operations at the Transmission Company of Nigeria ,TCN, Engr. Nafisatu Asabe Ali had identified a poor maintenance culture and inadequate and aged equipment, among other challenges, as underlying reasons for the incessant multiple collapses of the national power grid witnessed in recent months.
Jos Electricity Distribution Company (Jos DisCo) in a statement obtained from its verified Facebook page, confirmed the current power outage and attributed it to the loss of power supply from the national grid.
“The loss of power supply from the national grid occurred this morning at about 11:28 hours of today, Thursday, November 7 ,2024, hence the loss of power supply on all our feeders”.
“We hope to restore normal power supply to our esteemed customers as soon as the grid supply is restored to normalcy”, the statement stated.
