National grid collapses 7th time in 2022 under President Buhari’s administration

National grid collapses 7th time in 2022 under President Buhari’s administration

At 10:51 a.m. on Monday, the national grid reached zero megawatts (MW), resulting in a nationwide outage.

The development came just days after electricity customers reported improved supply, according to the Daily Trust.

The national electricity grid had 3,712MW generated by 21 Generation Companies (GenCos) at 10 a.m. on Monday before dropping to 0MW an hour later.

According to System Operations, only a section of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Afam IV, was connected to the grid but had no supply as of 12noon.

As of Sunday, the highest generation was 4,100MW and the lowest was 3,652MW, with the frequency ranging between 49.04 and 50.34 Hertz (Hz).

Since July 1st of this year, consumers have reported an increase in power supply in their various areas.

For example, the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) recently confirmed an increase in its daily allocation to over 500MW from the previous 300MW.

Though the national grid had not yet reached 5,000MW, Daily Trust observed that load rejection had decreased significantly, particularly around the DisCos’ networks, with some customers entitled to five hours of supply recording more than 12 hours daily.

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) attributed the nationwide improvement in power supply to the partial activation of contracts that seek to hold sector operators accountable for deliberate incompetence.

The national grid went down twice in July and August, but both times it was quickly restored, and power supply improved before the latest system failure on Monday.

According to records, this is the seventh system failure this year, far more than last year’s three.

Although TCN, the national grid manager, had yet to determine the cause of the crash, some insiders speculated that it could have been caused by a maintenance of the 330-kilovolt Jos-Bauchi transmission line scheduled for Monday.

Some distribution companies, including Kaduna Electric, Enugu, and Kano, had already informed their customers about the nationwide outage, noting that efforts were underway to restore supply.