The federal government said the collapse of the national grid on Friday was caused by “vandalism” on a transmission tower on the Odukpani – Ikot Ekpene 330kV double circuit transmission line, leading to a loss of about 400MW of generation.
Isa Sanusi, spokesperson to the Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, said this in a statement on Twitter on Saturday.
“This consequently led to a cascade of plants shut down across the country,” he said.
The affected power plant was recently upgraded alongside Okpai and Alam IV power plants, to contribute 400 megawatts of electricity to the national grid.
Electricity companies on Friday notified their customers of the latest grid failure which threw many cities into darkness.
“Please be informed that there has just been a national grid collapse causing an outage in our franchise areas. We apologize for the inconvenience caused and appeal that you bear with us while we await restoration from the TCN. We regret all inconvenience caused,” the AbujaElectricity Distribution Company said.
“Dear customers, there was a loss of supply as a result of the system collapse of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) about 6:30 p.m. across all our franchise states of Bauchi, Benue, Gombe and Plateau,” Jos electricity distribution company said.
The latest collapse is the fifth this year.
The Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, had said poor maintenance and shortage of gas were the causes of the collapse. He said steps but had been mitigated by the Presidential Power Initiative to prevent future occurrence.
“While a detailed investigation into the immediate and remote causes of the recurring grid failure is currently ongoing by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission and System Operator (the operator of the national grid), the process of restoring supply is ongoing with some sections of the national grid already energised and supply restored to consumers,” Mr Sanusi said in the statement.
He said the grid was being restored by the system operator as other on-grid power plants were dispatched to cover the lost generation capacity from the Calabar power plant owned by the Niger Power Holding Company Ltd.
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