Darkness Looms As Fire Guts TCN Transmission Substation In Lagos

The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) electricity substation in the Alagbon area of Lagos State has been gutted by fire.

The Publisher Nigeria reports that the fire incident which occurred at about 4:30 pm on Wednesday, affected one of its 60MVA power transformers in the substation.

In a statement, the spokesperson of TCN, Ndidi Mbah, said the operator on duty heard a heavy bang from the switchyard and immediately moved to the switchyard to investigate the sound and found fire under the cooling fans of the transformer.

She added that frantic efforts were made to put out the fire with the fire extinguisher in the substation, but oil, which started dripping from the transformer, ignited the fire more.

She said: “The engineer had to switch off power supply in the substation on the 300MVA 330/132/33KV transformer and also made calls to the Federal Fire Service in Onikan and the Lagos State Fire Service at Dolphin Estate. The fire was put out at 1735hrs by the fire services.

“From initial assessment, the transformer can be salvaged/repaired, and presently, the situation is under control.

“Normal supply to the station was restored at 1927hrs. All available transformers in the station have been restored. Eko Distribution is on the ground for the management of the affected three no. 33KV feeder, as we have redundancy in the station.

“All customers feeding from Alagbon 330/132/33KV substation will have supply tonight. The situation is under control, and TCN will do a comprehensive check of the affected transformer immediately to enable it properly asess the transformer for repair work.

“We are truly saddened by this incident, especially as the company had operated from the beginning of this year to- date without any system collapse or major incident such as this.

“Even as we have already mobilized our engineers to commence the transformer assessment and repair work immediately, we will endeavour to ascertain the trigger of this fire incident with the view to forestall such incident in our substations.”