Why National Power Grid Collapsed Third-time in One Week
The Transmission Company of Nigeria announced that two towers along its 330kV Shiroro-Kaduna transmission lines one and two were vandalized, damaging parts of both transmission lines, thus the recent nationwide blackout.
This it said aggrevavated an already weak electricity grid resulting in yet another system collapse on Saturday (today) morning throwing the country into a nationwide blackout.
The Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN confirmed that seven of the nation’s eleven electricity distribution companies had therefore zero load allocation.
According to reports from the Shiroro Regional office of TCN, the 330kV transmission line one tripped first, followed shortly by the second.
This led to the discovery of two damaged towers – towers T133 and tower T 136 – with their cables badly damaged at several points.
The vandalized Shiroro-Kaduna 330kV lines 1&2 are vital lines through which bulk power is transmitted to parts of the North West region, with each line capable of carrying 600MW.
Data supplied by the National System Operator, an arm of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, showed grid supply was 3,041.72MW as of 8 a.m.
It dropped significantly to 47MW by 9 a.m., with only Azura-Edo IPP on the grid.
Further analysis showed that the grid on Friday recorded a peak supply of 4,807.2MW with 4,011.27MW as the lowest supply.