Nigerians are groaning again in darkness after the national electricity grid suffered a major failure on Sunday, seizing power supply to homes amidst scorching weather conditions.
The power grid was said to have collapsed in the early hours of Sunday, according to Eko Electricity Distribution Company, who confirmed the collapse of the national grid collapse on Sunday via its Twitter handle.
It explained that the current power outage was due to system collapse on the national grid.
The company, however assured Nigerians that electricity supply would be restored as soon as possible.
“Dear customer, the outage you’re experiencing is due to a system collapse on the National Grid. We are working with our TCN partners to restore supply as soon as possible,” the tweet reads.
The development comes less than one year after the national grid collapsed twice within 24 hours in January 2020.
Data from the Transmission Company of Nigeria showed the nation’s electricity grid has collapsed 108 times after the power sector was privatised.
A total system collapse means total blackout nationwide, while partial system collapse is a failure of a section of the grid, according to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission
The grid has continued to suffer system collapse over the years amid lack of spinning reserve that is meant to forestall such occurrences.
Spinning reserve is the generation capacity that is online but unloaded and that can respond within 10 minutes to compensate for generation or transmission outages.
Although five power stations are meant to provide spinning reserves, sometimes none may have actual reserve.
The power stations are Nigerian National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) in Egbin, Delta, Olorunsogo, Geregu and Omotosho
Nigeria has the capacity to produce 13,000 megawatts of power, compared with more than 50,000MW for South Africa, which has a similar-size economy and a quarter of the population. But Nigeria’s aging grid delivers only about 5,000MW of power to its 200 million citizens — roughly what the city of Edinburgh provides for 500,000 residents.
