Blackout Looms In Nigeria

According to a recent report by the New Telegraph, the country may soon experience blackout due to the workload on the facilities generating electricity.

In recent times, Nigerians have been enjoying a considerable power supply, which they are happy about, compared to the past.

But all that may soon be over if the report is anything to go by. Reproduced below is the report by the New Telegraph.

The relative stability in electricity supply and an all-time high power generation may lead to a system collapse that could plunge the nation into a blackout, New Telegraph has learnt. Investigations showed that the nation’s weak national electricity grid built severely decades ago was the weakest link in the transmission infrastructure.

The grid, which was built with capacity to retain about 4, 000 Mega Watt (MW), is now serving as a storage for over 4,500 Mega Watt (MW). Nigeria had last week broken a new record in power transmission, as the National Grid Transmission recorded another peak of 4, 656 Mega Watt (MW) a few days after it broke the last record. An engineer with the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) told our correspondent at the weekend that the grid is “currently over-laboured” by the new peak in power transmission. The company’s management, he said, was aware of the danger to its achievements in the last three weeks and had deployed engineers “to ensure that the good news on the power transmission is not short-lived.”

Although the system operations (SO) of TCN had secured spinning reserve contracts of 295mw to provide stability and cushion the system in the event of a sudden load/generation changeover, the facility, which is cardinal to electricity mega watts (MW) storage and transmission, he said, “was built some decades ago and is in dire need of total overhaul.”

The TCN confirmed at the weekend that the grid had suffered 35 failures in two-and-a-half years. It, however, said the collapse was majorly caused by gas supply and not necessarily transmission constraints. But General Manager, Public affairs of TCN, Mrs. Seun Olagunju, said in a statement that the company only suffered four system collapses in the first two quarters of 2015. “Unlike 2013 and 2014 when the sector had persistent records of collapses; 22 in 2013 and nine in 2014, all of which resulted in degrees of power cuts in the system, (Nigeria) has only had four from January to June following upgrades in the system,” she added. Two of the four incidents, she said, occurred in May and resulted in low generation of about 1,400 megawatts (mw). Olagunju also explained that most of the collapses had come from shortages in gas supply and not necessarily from transmission constraints.

“It is public knowledge that the frequency of system collapses has been going down drastically following several equipment and infrastructure upgrade by TCN besides aggressive capacity building of the system operators,” Olagunju said. She stated that in 2013, there were 22 instances of system collapse and in 2014, this was drastically brought down to nine.

“This year, the transmission grid has experienced only four system collapses out of which two in May is attributable to extremely low generation of around 1400mw due to gas supply shortages. “In fact, majority of these collapses are due to shortages in gas supply, which creates serious load/generation imbalance. But there is a serious effort ongoing to reduce these collapses,” she said.

According to her, the system operations (SO) of TCN has secured spinning reserve contracts of 295 mw to provide stability and cushion the system in the event of a sudden load/ generation changeover. Olagunju, however, did not disclose the details of the spinning reserve contract, especially the particulars of the generation outfit that has been contracted for the spinning reserve.

But she said the TCN would continue to work at enhancing the transmission capacity and reliability of the national grid in order to provide improved and sustainable power delivery to public electricity distribution companies in the country. Although the Federal Government has privatised the generation and distribution strata of electricity and handed their assets over to new owners, the grid is still under government’s control due to its ownership of allimportant transmission system. The Federal Government is still engaged mainly in maintenance of the national grid, which is due for overhaul.

http://newtelegraphonline.com/blackout-looms-as-tcn-exceeds-installed-capacity/