The nation was thrown into darkness in the early hours of Wednesday after power generation dropped to 2,900 megawatts as Nigeria’s perennial menace of power outage continues unabatedly.
The occasional system collapse leading to grim darkness further compounds Nigerians’ woes who are struggling to get by everyday amid the Covid-19 lockdown. For many, it means money that should have gone into putting meals on the family table continues to get into the hands of petrol pump men and that’s for a few Nigerians who can afford the luxury this crisis time.
Confirming the collapse on its infrastructure, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) said the system failure occurred around 1 am Wednesday before a quick restoration of the grid.
“TCN would commence investigations into the cause of the supply loss as soon as full recovery is achieved. We are committed to ensuring grid stability and consistent bulk power supply, especially at this time of the pandemic,”the General Manager, Public Affairs at TCN, Ndidi Mbah said in a statement.
Years after the privatization of the generation and distribution ends of the power sector, the Nigerian government still operates the transmission chain through TCN, often described as the weakest link in the country’s power sector, thanks to the jaded grid which has continued to contribute to TCN’s failings.
The New Diplomat recalls that the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), worried over its increasing loss margin, had in 2019 said over 100 electricity grid collapses had been recorded since the power sector was privatized in 2013.
According to the NCC real-time data for Mid-Wednesday, the power loss following the latest system collapse shows that 1,658mw has already been lost to the system disturbance.
The power grid is however expected to ramp up once TCN restores major transmission lines in the East; peak energy generation may return to the 4,000MW threshold.
Also, 1,720MW was available to the 11 Distribution Companies (DisCos) for supply to consumers as TCN restored the national grid.
Ibadan and Ikeja DisCos got the highest of 270MW allocation each while Abuja DisCo followed with 250MW. EKo got 180MW and Benin got 150MW.
The six other DisCos comprising Enugu, Jos, Kaduna, Kano, Port Harcourt and Yola got 100MW each.
A report from the NCC for Tuesday power generation revealed that peak power generation was at 4,641MW while the lowest generation was 3,120MW.
While 94,074 megawatt-hour (MWH) was the aggregate energy generated for the day, about 10 million registered electricity consumers got 92,436MWH as 1,638MWH was lost to various technical constraints.
