Rejection of power allocation by electricity Distribution Companies may be a major contributor to the frequent system collapses in the country, a BusinessDay investigation has revealed.
According to industry sources, most of the time, where a Disco is supposed to take about 60 megawatts, it may end up taking just 30MW, thereby causing an imbalance in the grid system, which could lead to system collapse.
A source told BusinessDay that there is enough generation that could serve the entire country well, but noted that the Discos always reject the supplies for fear that the consumers will not pay for the power supplied.
Meanwhile, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) is likely to investigate the system collapse that occurred on Thursday, January 16, because the company believes it has installed enough safety nets capable of forestalling this kind of disturbance.
TCN has announced the restoration of the national gird after the latest collapse, which occurred while the grid was recovering from an earlier partial system disturbance. It said that full restoration of the grid was achieved at about 2:19am, Friday.
The company however stated that the initial disturbance of the grid which occurred at about 12.34pm Thursday, was a partial collapse, as the grid was still supplying Port-Harcourt, Aba, Omoku, Yenegoa, Afam among others, through Afam IV, Rivers IPP and Omoku Power Stations.
TCN immediately commenced efforts to synchronise other parts of the network, but as restoration reached advanced stages, the situation suddenly degenerated into a collapse of the nation’s grid. “Full restoration of the grid re-commenced immediately after the incident and by 10 pm yesterday, most parts of the nation had been reconnected to the grid; at about 2:19 am however, the grid was fully restored,” it said.
Ndidi Mbah, general manager, public affairs at TCN, has assured Nigerians that the company was not relenting in its efforts to completely stabilise the grid. She noted, however, that because the national grid is still being operated with zero spinning reserve (extra generating capacity), system instability like what was witnessed on Thursday cannot be totally avoided.
The national electricity grid broke down eleven times in 2019, with the nation thrown into darkness each time this happened.
