One reoccurring decimal in the annals of power sector in Nigeria over two decades has to do with the consistent report about national electricity grid collapses.
These collapses have in no small ways cost the Nigeria economy a sizeable amount of revenue. As recent as in March 2018, report indicated that Nigeria’s Power sector lost an estimated N1, 042,000,000 in just one day owing to system collapse occasioned by insufficient gas supply, distribution infrastructure, transmission infrastructure and water reserves.
According to the report the loss was as a result of the shutting down of some gas turbines which led to insufficient gas supply, limitations in distribution and transmission infrastructure and water management constraints in some of the hydro plants.
Recently, Smart Omo Omoragbon, Assistant General Manager, Operation of the Transmission Company of Nigeria ((TCN), warned about the imminence of another system collapse as a result of the volume of idle power waiting for evacuation.
He observed that despite TCN’s existing capacity, load rejection from the DisCos, which causes high frequency and system collapses could still persist unless the DisCos are ready to distribute their loads.
Technically, transmission capacity is expected to double that of transmission, but in the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry, distribution capacity is a far cry from the transmission capacity of about 7,000Megawatts (Mw).
In February a report from the Power Advisory Team, Office of the Vice President, stated that “despite Federal Government’s efforts to address the nation’s power crisis, as well as mitigate the constant system collapse by the grid, about seven generating plants produced zero megawatts of electricity.”
“On February 20, 2018, average power sent out was 3,835MWh/hour (down by 134MWh/h from the previous day) “1175MW was not generated due to unavailability of gas”.
“29MW was not generated due to unavailability of transmission infrastructure, while 969MW was not generated due to high frequency resulting from unavailability of distribution infrastructure” the source said
Those who know in the power sector insist that the solution to tackling the incident of incessant system collapse is for adequate investment to be made in order to stabilise the grid.
They also observed that another solution to power system collapse is reduction in tripping of critical tie lines by having a well maintained transmission line trace as well as properly coordinated and discriminative line protection schemes.
Analysts said replacement of vandalized sky wires that expose the lines to lightning strikes and replacement of obsolete transmission equipment to reduce the incidence of equipment failure to the barest minimum is vital to resolve the problem.
It will be recalled that after the collapse in February, Babatunde Fashola, Minister of Power, Works and Housing insisted that the Federal Government was working hard to fix the power sector, stressing that despite the country’s electricity challenges, Nigeria was still exporting power to Republics of Benin, Niger and Togo.
Fashola, observe that in terms of population as a function of energy need of a country, “Niger is running on 80MW; Republic of Togo, 200MW, less than Abuja; Ghana is about 3,000MW installed capacity and they are not producing all of that. Lagos alone is getting 1,200MW; one state, half of another country. So we must understand the dynamics of electricity use.”
KELECHI EWUZIE
