Nigeria’s national power grid collapsed on Monday, resulting in a nationwide outage as the entire system crashed due to a loss of 1,100 megawatts from a previously recorded peak generation of 3,700mw.
This comes as airline operators in Nigeria warned on Monday that they only have three days left to shut down operations due to a continuing scarcity of aviation fuel.
HISDAY has learned that Mr. Abubakar Aliyu, Minister of Power, called an emergency meeting on Monday to resolve all outstanding issues with stakeholders in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) as a result of the deteriorating power situation.
According to the grid operation trend, 19 of the active 25 Gencos on the grid were producing power at 6 a.m., when the grid had 3,867.60MW, but that gradually decreased until it dropped to 2,761.20MW by 10 a.m., when six Gencos went down, leaving only 13, before crashing to zero at 10.40 a.m.
THISDAY has learned that at least 1,100MW was initially lost from the peak generation of 3,867MW before the Gencos began shutting down.
According to a grid operations report, the system had yet to pick up load as of Monday afternoon, with only three Generation Companies (Gencos) attempting to restart but failing to generate any energy.
According to the analysis, the affected plants included Azura-Edo IPP (Gas), which was generating 447MW previously, and Shiroro hydropower, which had 300MW previously but later shut down. Trans-Amadi (Gas) was down 92MW, Alaoji NIPP (Gas) was down 75MW, and Ihovbor NIPP (Gas) was down 101MW.
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), which manages the power grid, had yet to comment on the immediate cause of the collapse as of Monday, despite the fact that it was the first of the year.
The countrywide blackout worsened around 10:40 a.m., after the national grid failed, with the Eko Electricity Distribution Company confirming the incident in a text message to its customers.
“Dear esteemed customers, a system collapse occurred on the national grid at 10:40am today, resulting in power outages,” the text message said.
