Like mere stack of cards, the national electricity grid collapsed again penultimate week, throwing much of the nation into darkness. It was the seventh collapse this year, occurring barely five weeks after a previous incident. The collapse also happened 20 days after the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) facilitated a contract-based performance deal with distribution companies (DisCos) to optimise supply to Nigerians by guaranteeing 5000mw of power.
On Wednesday, July 20th, the national grid crashed to zero megawatts at about 11:27a.m. and 12:00 noon, and was immediately restored negligibly to 4mw with only Omoku and Shiroro plants producing 3mw and 1mw respectively. At 12:48p.m., the grid reportedly rose to 40mw, which the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) supplied to only the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC), leaving other DisCos with zero allocation. By 14:59p.m., the grid crashed again to zero megawatts.
Whereas TCN kept initial sealed lips on the grid collapse, DisCos notified customers of the incident. Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC) issued a statement saying: “Dear customers, we regret to inform you of a system collapse on the national grid at precisely 11:27a.m. today, July 20. We are in talks with (TCN) to ascertain the cause of the collapse and possible restoration timeline.” Other DisCos issued similar statements in respective franchise area.
Much later, TCN issued a statement explaining that the grid experienced system disturbance at about 11:27a.m., but that its restoration was almost complete as at 11:00p.m. “The incident was a result of a sudden drop in system frequency from 49.94Hertz (Hz) to 47.36Hz, which created system instability,” spokesperson for the company, Ndidi Mbah, said. According to her, reports from the National Control Centre revealed that the collapse was precipitated by the tripping of a unit with a load of 106megawatts in one of the generating stations due to “exhaust over-temperature.” She said the tripping pulled out other grid-connected units in the plant, resulting in aggregated generation loss of 457mw. “A train of events ensued, culminating in the collapse of the national grid. As obtainable in all systems, when a component of the electric power system is defective, the entire configuration is vitiated,” Mbah added, assuring that investigation was underway to establish the cause of the failure.
Early in April, the grid recorded its third system failure within 25 days. It collapsed on Friday, 08th April, after it had earlier collapsed on 14th March and barely 24hours later on 15th March, plunging the nation into darkness. Power Minister Abubakar Aliyu blamed the collapses on vandalisation of power infrastructure and assured that efforts were ongoing to restore the grid to optimal operation. According to him, the grid was being fully re-energised by the System Operator, while other on-grid power plants had been deployed to bridge lost generation capacity. He assured that government was probing the immediate and remote causes of recurring grid failure.
That was in April. Before the 20th July collapse, the previous incident was on Nigeria’s Democracy Day, 12th June. Between 2013 when the power sector was privatised and now, the national grid has collapsed more than 130 times and it is shocking that despites the high frequency, relevant authorities haven’t found a remedy to the to the ugly trend. There is a tendency in government to excuse the misnomer on the argument that it is not peculiar to Nigeria. In TCN’s statement following the 20th July collapse, Ndidi Mbah used the phrase “as obtainable in all systems,” just as Power Minister Aliyu once said it was a global phenomenon, even though we know public electricity rarely fails in Benin Republic next door, not to mention other places further afield. The recurrence of system failure is not acceptable and the argument of non-peculiarity to Nigeria does not wash. Government must find a solution – and fast – to repeated grid collapses. If centralisation of the grid is the challenge, it should be decentralised and farmed out to operators with proven competence. Enough of grid collapses!