National Grid restored as FG blames fire outbreak for collapse

The federal government has stated that the nationwide power outage witnessed on Thursday was a result of a fire outbreak. The Minister of Power, Bayo Adelabu, who made the disclosure on his official handle on X, formerly Twitter, said the event which occurred at 00:35Hrs on Thursday morning led to explosion sound on the Kainji/Jebba […]

The federal government has stated that the nationwide power outage witnessed on Thursday was a result of a fire outbreak.

The Minister of Power, Bayo Adelabu, who made the disclosure on his official handle on X, formerly Twitter, said the event which occurred at 00:35Hrs on Thursday morning led to explosion sound on the Kainji/Jebba 330kV line 2 (Cct K2J) blue phase CVT and Blue phase line Isolator of Kainji/Jebba 330kV line1 was observed burning.

He stated that this led to a sharp drop in frequency from 50.29Hz to 49.67 Hz at 12:35Hrs with Jebba generation loss of 356.63MW while Kainji started dropping load from 451.45 MW at 00:35 to zero at 00:41Hrs frequency dropped further from 49.37 Hz to 48.41Hz then resulted in system collapse of the grid.

Daily Trust reports that the collapse is coming few weeks after the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) celebrated over one year of zero grid collapse, a feature that has characterised the Nigerian power sector.

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Daily Trust gathered that power transmission dropped to 273 megawatts of electricity coming from two out of the over 27 electricity generation sources.

This is the first time of witnessing the situation under the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as there were multiple incidents of grid collapse under former President Muhammadu Buhari.

Meanwhile, the TCN, in a statement on Thursday, disclosed that restoration of the grid has reached advanced stages with power supply now available in the West, North Central, South, East, and a large portion of the northern parts of the country.

The statement by its General Manager of Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah, noted that the power outage was coming after over 421 days of consistent grid stability.

She added that the incident is being investigated with the view to forestalling future occurrence.