How Saturday’s grid collapse occurred – NERC

Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission says Saturday’s grid collapse was caused by a current transformer explosion.

Recall that for the third time in one week, on Saturday morning, the national grid collapsed again as power generation went off at about 8:16am.

NERC, while giving an update on the collapse in a statement on its social media handles, 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.

“Initial reports on the grid disturbance that occurred this morning indicate that today’s outage was triggered by an explosion of a current transformer at the Jebba transmission station at 0815hrs and an associated cascade of power plants shut down arising from the loss of load.”

But the commission said that efforts to restore supply had advanced “with power significantly restored, as at 1300hrs, in 33 states and the FCT.

“In line with the provisions of the Electricity Act 2023, the unbundling of the System Operator function (ISO) out of Transmission Company of Nigeria Plc is ongoing with the expectation that an independent System Operator would engender more discipline in grid management and optimised investment in infrastructure.”

In its efforts to find a permanent resolution to the challenges of the national grid, the commission said it shall shortly conduct an investigative public hearing to identify immediate and remote causes of recurring incidents of grid disturbances and widespread outages.

”The date and venue of the public hearing will shortly be announced in the national dailies and stakeholders are encouraged to participate,” the statement added.

Recall that the grid tripped off on Monday and Tuesday while being restored.

Our correspondent’s checks confirmed that power generation was 3,042 megawatts at 8 am and peaked at 3,968MW at 7 am.

Generation however dropped to 47MW as of 9 am.

Allocation to power distribution companies stood at 0.00MW as of the time of the incident.