Multiple national grid collapses threaten minister’s 6,000MW pledge

Electricity consumers have decried the repeated collapse of the national grid, which happened again on Saturday. They described it as an embarrassment to the nation.

Sunday PUNCH reports that the national grid collapsed around 8.16am on Saturday, the third time in one week, with its attendant blackout across the nation.

Checks by our correspondent confirmed that power generation was 3,042 megawatts at 8am. It peaked at 3,968MW at 7am. However, it dropped to 47MW around 9am. It later rose marginally as the system operator made efforts to restore normalcy.

The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, had promised that Nigeria would attain 6,000 megawatts by the end of the year.
Adelabu assured Nigerians of improvement in power supply by next year, adding that the government was doing its best to enhance power generation and transmission.
But incessant collapses of the grid are threatening the achievement of the 6,000 megawatts target.

Meanwhile, the TCN spokesperson, Ndidi Mbah, did not answer calls to her phone or reply to a message seeking information about the grid collapse.

In an interview with our correspondent, the Convener of the Electricity Consumer Protection Advocacy Centre, Princewill Okorie, expressed worry that electricity customers, especially those on estimated billing, continued to pay for darkness as the grid kept collapsing.
He alleged that substandard equipment must have been used for power infrastructure.

According to him, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission and the Ministry of Power pay more attention to the distribution companies and their revenue, ignoring the rights of the consumers, especially in the area of metering.

He challenged the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, asking what it had been doing to protect electricity consumers.

Okorie said, “Consumers don’t have electricity supply after you’ve raised their bill to over N200 per kilowatt-hour as Band A customers. Then, those who are not metered will be billed as if they have a power supply for 24 hours. The consumers are at the receiving end in all of these; their businesses have collapsed. How will they make money? The same consumer that is funding infrastructure; the same consumer that is funding metering, the same consumer that is paying the bill.
“What is the quality of materials used in building the grid? Who are the professionals building the grid? How can the grid be stable when transformers are connected to the grid at the weekend and at night without supervision? When substandard materials are being used all over, how can you build a grid that is stable?”

NERC blames explosion

The NERC said the grid collapse was a result of a current transformer explosion.
In a statement on its social media handles, the NERC said it “notes with concern the recent escalating incidence of grid disturbances often leading to marked outage in several states thus reversing many of the gains recently achieved in reducing infrastructure deficit and improving grid stability.”

The statement reads, “Initial reports on the grid disturbance that occurred this morning indicate that today’s outage was triggered by an explosion of a current transformer at the Jebba transmission station at 0815hrs and an associated cascade of power plants shutdowning from the loss of load.”

The commission stated, however, that efforts to restore supply had advanced “with power significantly restored, as at 1300hrs, in 33 states and the FCT.”

It added, “In line with the provisions of the Electricity Act 2023, the unbundling of the System Operator function out of Transmission Company of Nigeria Plc is ongoing with the expectation that an independent System Operator would engender more discipline in grid management and optimised investment in infrastructure.”

Adelabu had said during the week that there was the need to have power grids in different regions or states to put an end to incessant grid collapses.

The minister, who spoke when he unveiled Hexing Livoltek in Lagos, said grid collapse was almost inevitable in Nigeria given the deplorable state of the country’s power infrastructure.

According to him, having multiple power grids in each region and state would ensure stability.