The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), on Saturday, blamed the collapse of the national grid on a transformer that exploded at 330kV Jebba Transmission substation.
Professor Bart Nnaji, former Minister of Power, has also called on the federal government to resume the signing of Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) with private investors to ramp up electricity generation in Nigeria.
Nigeria’s electricity grid reportedly suffered another breakdown yesterday morning, the third of such collapses last week, plunging the whole nation into total darkness.
TCN's Public Affairs General Manager, Mrs. Ndidi Mbah, issued a statement after the incident stating that the activation system was activated, prompting the busbars to curtail the explosion, thereby preventing an outbreak of fire and further damage to adjacent equipment.
Mrs. Mbah said: “According to the report from the NCC, the bus section of a current transformer exploded at 330kV Jebba Transmission Substation, and as expected, the protection system was activated, and this promptly opened the busbars to curtail the explosion, thereby preventing an outbreak of fire and further damage to adjacent equipment.”
She characterized the situation as a temporary disruption.
“The Transmission Company of Nigeria hereby states that the national grid experienced a temporary disturbance at about 8:15am, today, 19th October 2024.”
As per the statement, the protection system caused a temporary disturbance on the grid.
Speaking on the recent turn of events, TCN stated : “Our engineers at Jebba have successfully carried out switching, isolating the faulty current transformer.
“They have equally reconfigured the busbar arrangement, restoring power supply to the station, and other parts of the grid.”
Meanwhile, on Friday, the TCN revealed that two towers along its 330kV Shiroro-Kaduna transmission lines one and two had been vandalised, damaging parts of both transmission lines.
The Shiroro Regional office of TCN reported that, the 330kV transmission line one tripped first, followed shortly by the second.
On this note, NERC has also attributed yesterday’s collapse of the national grid to an explosion of a transformer.
As per a statement that was issued: “The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission notes with concern the recent escalating incidence of grid disturbances often leading to marked outage in several states thus reversing many of the gains recently achieved in reducing infrastructure deficit and improving grid stability.
“Initial reports on the grid disturbance that occurred this morning indicate that today’s outage was triggered by an explosion of a current transformer at the Jebba transmission station at 0815hrs and an associated cascade of power plants shut down arising from the loss of load,” NERC explained.
Additionally, NERC asserted that the commission's top priority is to find a lasting solution for the frequent grid collapses.
The Commission stated that the unbundling of the System Operator (ISO) function from the Transmission Company of Nigeria Plc is still ongoing as per the Electricity Act of 2023.
It conveyed optimism that the establishment of an independent System Operator would foster more discipline in grid management and encourage optimized infrastructure investments.
The regulatory authority has announced plans to conduct an investigation to find both the immediate and underlying causes of frequent grid disturbances and widespread outages.
“In pursuit of finding a permanent resolution to the challenges of the national grid, the Commission shall shortly conduct an investigative public hearing to identify immediate and remote causes of recurring incidence of grid disturbances and widespread outages."
