TCN restores electricity supply nationwide after Grid collapse

The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has fully restored the national electricity grid after a system collapse occurred on Thursday.

In a statement by the spokesperson, Ndidi Mbah on Friday, TCN said the collapse occurred around 4pm while the grid was recovering from an earlier partial system disturbance.

However, full restoration of the grid was achieved at about 2:19am of Friday, it noted. “The initial disturbance of the grid which occurred at about 12.34pm yesterday was a partial collapse of the system, as the grid was still supplying Port-Harcourt, Aba, Omoku, Yenagoa, Afam among others, through Afam IV, Rivers IPP and Omoku Power Stations.

“Effort immediately commenced to synchronize other parts of the network but as restoration reached advanced stage, the situation suddenly degenerated into a collapse of the nation’s grid,” it noted.

The statement said TCN was not relenting in its efforts to completely stabilize the grid. It however blamed a zero spinning reserve level of the national grid saying until that is resolved system collapse cannot be totally avoided.

Daily Trust reports that TCN had done a competitive procurement of 240 megawatts (MW) spinning reserve since 2018, but that was yet to take off as the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has not released a new electricity tariff which would capture the payment for the reserved energy.

In the case of a voltage problem or frequency instability, contracted Generation Companies (GenCos) can spring up the 240MW spinning reserve which would power the grid immediately to avoid a system collapse and the prolonged outages that come with that.

Before 2016, the grid had operated between 100MW to 200MW of spinning reserve but that was put at zero because no payment is being made to GenCos which ought to provide such ancillary services.

TCN said full restoration of the grid began immediately after the Thursday incident and as at 10pm, most parts of the nation had been reconnected to the grid and reaching full restoration by the early morning of Friday.

TCN therefore solicited the support and understanding of Nigerians saying the company was working to modernize the Grid.