- Nigeria’s national electricity grid collapsed six times within a period of eight days in January
- The development was uncovered from the latest data from the the Nigeria Electricity System Operator, an arm of the Transmission Company of Nigeria
- The CEO of the TCN has stated that in order to achieve stability in the national grid, there must be adequate investment in the power sector
Latest data from the Transmission Company of Nigeria has shown that the national electricity grid collapsed six times within a period of eight days this month, Punch reports.
Statistics from an arm of the TCN, the Nigeria Electricity System Operator, showed that the incidents occurred between Monday, January 1 and Monday, January 8.
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NAIJ.com gathers that during this first system collapse which occurred between January 1 and 2, the country’s power generation crashed from 3,667.5 megawatts to 5.0 megawatts.
On January 3, which was the second grid collapse, power generation was at 51 megawatts, but moved up to 2,660.1 megawatts the following day. For the third time on January 5, power generation crashed to 107 megawatts.
Power generation also dropped during the three other incidents.
According to the data, the peak power generation during the eight-day period hovered between 3,707.2 megawatts and 4,982.7 megawatts.
However, the grid kept collapsing, leading to an inability for the figures to be sustained.
At a recent event in Abuja, the chief executive officer of TCN, Usman Mohammed, explained why the grid kept collapsing. He also called for adequate investment as a means of stabilizing the grid.
He stated: “There are certain things that need to be put in place for us to have grid stability and one of them is that we need to put in adequate investment. One of the key investments that we need to do quickly is that we need to build another line between Benin and Omotosho.
“When we do that, we think that we will be able to stabilise the grid, because 70 per cent of the instability we have is between Lagos and Benin. This, of course, is because we have so many generation stations located on that axis."
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Meanwhile, NAIJ.com previously reported that the Transmission Company of Nigeria said a total system collapse of the national electricity grid was recorded on September 28, 2016 at 8:03 p.m., resulting in temporary loss of electricity generation for the nation’s power grid.
A statement from TCN’s management said that reports obtained from power stations and the sequence of events generated by the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) had revealed the cause of the collapse.
It said the SCADA system report indicated that the system collapse was triggered by the tripping of Egbin power plants Units ST4, ST6 and ST5.
Nigeria's electricity crisis explained - on NAIJ.com TV:
Source: Naija.ng