Nigeria’s Grid Collapses Again: When Will the Power Outage End?
As of the time this report was being written, the power generation was just 42.7 megawatts (MW), down from a peak of 3,594.60 MW at around 1 am on Tuesday.
At noon, only the Delta Power plant had 41.00 MW of operational capacity on the grid, compared to Afam’s 1.7 MW.
The system collapsed twice in less than five days, putting the country in complete darkness for more than 12 hours.
Recall that on that particular Thursday, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), which operates the country’s grid from Osogbo in Osun State, had a countrywide blackout that lasted for hours until it was resolved.
Adebayo Adelabu, Nigeria’s Minister of Power, alleged that the national grid collapsed early last Thursday as a result of the explosion at Kainji/Jebba 330kV a few days prior to this tragedy.
In a series of tweets on the X platform, the minister announced this while stressing that everyone is working together to ensure a prompt restoration of power.
He said: “At 00:35Hrs this morning, Fire outbreak with explosion sound was observed on Kainji/Jebba 330kV line 2 (Cct K2J) blue phase CVT & Blue phase line Isolator of Kainji/Jebba 330kV line1 was observed burning. This led to sharp drops in frequency from 50.29Hz to 49.67 Hz at 0:35:06Hrs with Jebba generation loss of 356.63MW.
“We are on top of the situation and speedy restoration is in progress. The fire has been fully arrested and over half of the connections are now up and the rest will be fully restored in no time. My sincere appreciation to those who responded or expressed concern via different.”
