The national grid was progressively being restored following the third collapse in 2024, which caused a blackout throughout the whole country.
As of 5 p.m. yesterday, the grid, which failed after 2 a.m. on Monday, was back up to 2,755.93 megawatts.
The collapse was caused by a fire at the Afam Power Generating Station in River State, according to the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), which also confirmed that the national grid had been restored.
This was revealed in a statement released on Monday by Ndidi Mbah, the commission’s spokesperson.
This will be the third time in 2024 that the country’s electrical grid has failed, causing widespread power outages.
On February 4, 2024, the electrical grid fell for the first time.
After the national grid collapsed on March 28, the nation also experienced another nationwide blackout.
Mbah claims that a fire that started at the Afam V 300kV busbar coupler and caused the units at Afam III and Afam VI to trip is what caused the collapse.
He added that the grid became unstable as a result of the fire incident, partially collapsing.
“After a fire event at the Afam Power Generating Station, which caused a partial disturbance of the nation’s grid, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) announces the full restoration of the national system.This morning, April 15, 2024, at 02:41, a fire broke out at the Afam V 330kV busbar coupler, causing the units at Afam III and Afam VI to trip.
This caused a 305 MW and MW of abrupt generation loss, respectively, which destabilized the system and led to a partial collapse, according to Mbah.
In addition, the commission clarified that the Ibom Power Plant, which supplied energy to certain areas of the Port Harcourt Region but was disconnected from the grid, was unaffected by the collapse.
TCN claims that because the collapse did not affect the customers of energy in certain regions, the impact of the system disturbance was lessened.
Parts of the Port Harcourt Region were supplied by the Ibom Power Plant, which was disconnected from the grid during the incident.
This reduced the impact of the system disruption even more. The impacted area of the grid has been entirely restored and stabilized, according to TCN.
“TCN pledges to continue investing in measures aimed at further strengthening the grid infrastructure and reaffirms its commitment to enhancing the resilience and reliability of the national grid,” the statement continued.
As of 8:00 am, Okpai, Geregu, and Ibom power produced 266.50 MW of electricity on the grid, according to data from ISO.
Based on statistics from the Independent System Operator (ISO), a TCN division, there was only one operational generation company: Ibom Power.
“The current outage being experienced within our franchise States is a result of loss of power supply from the national grid,” Jos DisCo said in a statement confirming the collapse. The loss of power on all of our feeders resulted from the national grid going down early today, Monday, April 15, 2024, at approximately 02:42 hours.
Dr. Friday Adakole Elijah, the company’s head of corporate affairs, expressed optimism that the national grid will be repaired so that its prestigious clients may resume receiving regular power supplies.