The current power outages experience across the country has been attributed to increasing waves of Power System Collapses and System Disturbances across the transmission value chain.
The country’s National Transmission Grid was alleged to have collapsed completely this last weekend. The system which has been experiencing challenges was said to have collapsed completely weekend with no allocation to the distribution companies for supply to customers.
Officials of some of the distribution companies confirmed this when they said they could not supply their customers electricity in any of their franchise areas.
From Lagos, to Abuja, to Yola, to Ilorin, Kaduna, to Enugu, Owerri, Lokoja, to Port Harcourt, to Benin to Zamfara, and others, it has been one woes of Black out and several hours of Power outages to another.
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The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) was however not providing information on the development but supply is gradually been restored across the country.
The grid had earlier collapsed on Friday at about 2pm leaving cities across the country including Yola, the capital of Adamawa State without supply.
The first collapse of the Grid in 2019 occurred on January 2 at about 10.20pm. A statement by the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing which supervises the Transmission Company of Nigeria blamed the outage on a fire incident on the Escravos Lagos Pipeline System of the Nigerian Gas Processing and Transportation Company Limited.
The fire incident was reported near Okada in Edo State with widespread blackout across the country as the pipeline which supplies gas to six thermal power plants was shutdown
Meanwhile, the Grid had also collapsed on December 21, 2018. The incident which was captured in data from the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing showed that it was the first incident on the Grid in about three months. There were a total of 12 incidents of Grid collapse in 2018. These were the five incidents in January of that year, one each in February, June, July and December. Two were reported in September while the only partial collapse was recorded in April
When BusinessDay called on the Transmission Company of Nigeria TCN, the spokes person, Mba said that the problems could be local one and n ot nationwide.
But some of the Dsico that spoke to BusinessDay blamed the current load shedding they embark on this situation.
Some of the industry operators that spoke to BusinessDay said electricity consumers in Nigeria are not unmindful of the cancerous challenges bedeviling the Nigerian power sector value chain from exchange rate volatility, to Investors Fatigue, Tariff Shortfall, market shortfalls, to fiscal in discipline,
Others are weak governance structure, huge settlement crises resulting in dearth of Market Liquidity,huge metering gaps and a ratio of 5% Universal Access to power base on Global Benchmark of 1,000 Megawatts / One Million Population.
They said that’s the Aggregate of Technical, Commercial And Collections loses in the year 2011 & 2012 was less than 40% compared to what is obtained in January, 2019.. “The market return on Investment in the Nigerian power sector is 25% Profit and 75% loses. This is based ATC&C LOSSES of 75% or less than 30%, percent market settlement”.
