Nigeria’s electrical supply has again collapsed, with power output falling from a peak of 3,594.60 megawatts (MW) at midnight to a mere 42.7MW.
Only the Delta Power plant had 41.00 MW of operational power on the grid at noon on Tuesday, while Afam had 1.7 MW.
This comes barely five days after the grid collapsed twice within a space of more than 12 hours, plunging the nation into darkness.
It is not yet clear what led to the collapse, but Adebayo Adelabu, Minister of Power, had blamed the last one on an inferno.
In a series of tweets on his X handle, the minister attributed the development to a fire outbreak on Kainji/Jebba 330kV line, leading to about 356.63MW generation loss.
“At 00:35 Hrs this morning, a Fire outbreak with an 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,” Adelabu had said.
He said Kainji started dropping the load from 451.45 MW at 00:35:07 Hrs to zero.
“At 00:41 Hrs frequency dropped further from 49.37 Hz to 48.41 Hz resulting in the system collapse of the grid.
“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 channels and the team of Engineers for their prompt response to the situation and work done so far. Let’s get the restoration work completed as soon as possible,” he had said.
The national grid system collapsed for the second time in one week.
Electricity supply has been restored in Nigeria hours after a general blackout due to the collapse of the national grid on Tuesday.
This was disclosed by the Eko Electricity Distribution Company in a post on its X (formerly Twitter) handle.
The post reads: “Kindly be informed that all our load centers are back on supply and we have started bringing on our feeders.
“Power supply will be restored soon.”
The national grid system collapsed for the second time in one week.
This grid collapsed last Thursday, throwing Nigerian cities into darkness.
Power was restored hours later after a blackout that caused the power from the grid to drop to a meagre 273 megawatts of electricity, according to reports.
However, on Tuesday, Eko Electricity Distribution Company, which supplies electricity to some parts of Lagos announced another system collapse.
In a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter), EKEDC said, “Kindly be informed that following today’s system collapse at 11.31hrs, there is a total loss of supply across our network.
“We are currently engaging with our partners at the National Control Centre as we await further updates on restoration status.”
About a year ago, SaharaReporters reported that the national grid crashed to zero megawatts (MW) at 10:51 a.m. on Monday, September 26, 2022, causing a nationwide outage.
The national grid collapsed twice in July and August 2022 but was quickly restored.
According to records, the September 2022 collapse was the seventh system collapse that year, much more than the three recorded in 2022.
