Blackout Hits Homes As National Grid Collapses Again

Blackout has hit several homes across different parts of Nigeria, as the national power grid suffered another system collapse on Wednesday.

This was confirmed by some electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) in the country.

The Eko Electricity Distribution Company shared messages with its consumers notifying them of the development on Wednesday. The text message read, “Dear customer, the present outage is due to a system collapse on the National Grid. TCN (Transmission Company of Nigeria) assures us that supply will be restored shortly.”

The Kano Electricity DisCo also confirmed in a statement that the grid has witnessed another collapse, which led to nationwide power outage. The statement signed by the Head of Kano Electricity Distribution Company, Nura Shawai, read:

“This is to kindly inform the general public of another system collapse based on information available to us. This occurred today 28/7/2021 at 12:20 pm, as the national grid was disrupted, resulting in national blackout.

However, the grid controllers have assured that efforts towards restoring supply are in progress, promising speedy reconnection of Kano and other locations to the grid, as soon as the fault is rectified.”

What you should know

The grid, which is being managed by the government-owned Transmission Company of Nigeria, has continued to suffer system collapse over the years amid a lack of spinning reserve that is meant to forestall such occurrences.

Spinning reserve is the generation capacity that is online but unloaded and that can respond within 10 minutes to compensate for generation or transmission outages.

In December 2020, when the nation’s grid witnessed a collapse, TCN explained that it is normal for a system to collapse and that such an occurrence can happen in any country of the world.

The Acting Managing Director of TCN, Mr Sule Abdulaziz, explained that when the system collapsed in December, it was restored within 40 minutes of the incident. He stated that the company immediately went into action and stabilised the system in Abuja, before other parts of the country.