Blackout: TCN blames ‘temporary disturbance’, as national grid begins recovery

The Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, has disclosed that the national grid experienced a temporary disturbance at about 8:15 a.m., on Saturday, leading to nationwide power outages.

TCN explained that a report from the NCC (National Control Centre) showed that “the bus section of a current transformer exploded at 330kV Jebba Transmission Substation.

“And, as expected, the protection system was activated, and this promptly opened the busbars to curtail the explosion, thereby preventing the outbreak of fire and further damage to adjacent equipment.

“The action of the protection system led to a temporary disturbance on the grid.

“Our engineers at Jebba have successfully carried out switchings, isolating the faulty current transformer. They have equally reconfigured the busbar arrangement, restoring power supply to the station, and other parts of the grid.”

Checks on the latest data from the National System Operator showed that as of 12 noon, supply had recovered to 496.20MW.

News had reported earlier that the power grid had collapsed again, the third time in the past seven days and the eighth in total this year.

A check on data supplied by the National System Operator, an arm of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, showed grid supply was 3,041.72MW as of 8 am. It dropped significantly to 47MW by 9 am with only Azura-Edo IPP on the grid.

Further analysis showed that the grid on Friday recorded a peak supply of 4,807.2MW with 4,011.27MW as the lowest supply.

The national grid on its verified social media account, X (formerly Twitter) confirmed that seven of the nation’s eleven electricity distribution companies had zero load allocation.

Only Benin DisCo (70 MW), Ibadan DisCo (60 MW), Ikeja DisCo (30 MW) and Eko DisCo (20 MW) had minimal supply as of 10.16 am.

The Transmission Company of Nigeria had on Friday announced that two towers along its 330kV Shiroro–Kaduna transmission lines one and two have been vandalized, damaging parts of both transmission lines.

According to reports from the Shiroro Regional office of TCN, the 330kV transmission line one tripped first, followed shortly by the second, as efforts were still ongoing to reclose the first line, prompting the urgent mobilization of local vigilantes to patrol the lines.

This led to the discovery of two damaged towers, towers T133 and tower T 136, with their cables badly damaged at several points.