At 10:51 a.m. on Monday, Nigeria’s power grid crumbled to zero megawatts (MW), producing a statewide power outage. The outage came just days after electrical customers reported increased supplies.
The national power system had 3,712MW generated by 21 Generation Companies (GenCos) at 10 a.m. on Monday before dropping to 0MW an hour later. According to reports from the Transmission Company of Nigeria’s (TCN) System Operations, only Afam IV was on the grid but with no supply as of 12noon.
As of Sunday, the maximum generation was 4,100MW and the lowest was 3,652MW, with the frequency ranging between 49.04 and 50.34 Hertz (Hz). Since July 1 this year, consumers said power supply had increased in their various areas.
For instance, the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) recently confirmed an increment in its daily allocation to over 500MW from the actual 300MW it had distributed before then.
Though the national grid had not to crossed 5,000MW, the level of load rejection especially around the DisCos’ networks had dropped significantly with some customers entitled to a five-hour supply, recording over 12 hours daily.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) had attributed the improvement in power supply nationwide to the partial activation of contracts that seeks to hold sector operators liable for deliberate incompetence.
The national grid collapsed twice, in July and in August but was quickly restored and power supply improvement was sustained before the latest system collapse on Monday.
According to records, this is the seventh system collapse this year, much more than the three recorded last year.
Although TCN, the national grid manager was yet to establish the cause of the crash, some insiders said it could be a result of maintenance of the 330 kilovolts Jos – Bauchi transmission line maintenance slated for Monday.
Some DisCos including Kaduna Electric, Enugu, and Kano, had already communicated the nationwide outage to their customers noting that efforts were ongoing to restore supply.
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