Recurring Grid Collapse: NERC To Conduct Public Hearing, Says TCN Unbundling Ongoing

   ….Saturday Incident Quickly Fixed – TCN

By ABAH ADAH, Abuja

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC)  has said in pursuit of a permanent resolution to the challenges of the national grid, it would shortly conduct an investigative public hearing with a view to identifying immediate and remote causes of recurring incidence of grid disturbances and widespread outages in the country.

In a notice placed on its X handle on Sunday, the commission said the date and venue of the public hearing would shortly be announced in the national dailies and stakeholders are encouraged to participate.

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This coming on the heels of the latest grid disturbance on Saturday morning that led to power outage in parts of the country, less than a week of the previous grid collapse which occurred on the evening of Monday 15 October, 2024.

In  recent years, the power sector has continued to experience many challenges in areas of electricity policy enforcement, regulatory uncertainty, gas supply, transmission system constraints, and significant power supply shortfall to the disappointment of all stakeholders after the upstream and the downstream of the industry was privatised in November 2013 by the federal government to address the sectoral challenges and pave way for incremental and stable quality power supply.

NERC said it “notes with concern the recent escalating incidence of grid disturbances often leading to marked outage in several states thus reversing many of the gains recently achieved in reducing infrastructure deficit and improving grid stability”.

The commission disclosed that the unbundling of the System Operator function (ISO) out of TCN, a move it believed would instil more discipline in the sector for improved service, was underway, while appealing for patience from the Nigerian public.

NERC said the report got said the power outage experienced in parts of the country at the time of the emergency was a function of an explosion of a current transformer at the Jebba transmission station at 0815hrs, forcing power plants to shut down for lack of load, and that efforts to restore supply paid off as at 1300hrs in 33 states and the FCT.

On its part,TCN, in a statement signed by its general manager (GM), Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah, confirmed the grid dysfunction, saying it was a temporary disturbance at about 8:15am on Saturday, but was swiftly corrected by its engineers.

The transmission company quoted a report from the NCC (National Control Centre) as saying that the bus section of a current transformer exploded at 330kV Jebba Transmission Substation and as  expected, the protection system was activated, and this promptly opened the busbars to curtail the explosion, thereby preventing outbreak of fire and further damage to adjacent equipment.

“The action of the protection system led to a temporary disturbance on the grid.

“Our engineers at Jebba have successfully carried out switchings, isolating the faulty current transformer. They have equally reconfigured the busbar arrangement, restoring power supply to the station, and other parts of the grid,” TCN said.

However, a load check at about 02:30pm on Saturday showed that Abuja DisCo got 80 megawatts (MW), Benin DisCo, 70MW; Eko DisCo, 70MW; Enugu DisCo, OMW; Ibadan DisCo,100MW; Ikeja DisCo, 130MW; Jos DisCo, OMW; Kaduna DisCo, OMW; Kano DisCo, OMW; PHarcourt DisCo, OMW; Yola DisCo, OMW giving a total 450MW, leaving a deficit of 4,800MW based on the expected quantum of power for the period.