TCN Reveals Reason Behind National Grid Collapse

The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) says that the national grid is fully restored after what it described as partial disturbance at about 15.09Hrs on Saturday.

In a statement signed by its General Manager Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah, on Sunday, the TCN said the system disturbance is suspected to have been triggered by the unexpected tripping of three units of a power generating station.

This, according to the statement, suddenly removed 313MW from the grid, causing system instability that led to the loss of bulk supply to a section of the national grid.

“The system disturbance, which brings to three, the partial grid disturbances, with one total disturbance this year, is suspected to have been triggered by the unexpected tripping of three (3) units of a power generating station, which suddenly removed 313MW from the grid, causing system instability that led to the loss of bulk supply to a section of the national grid,” the statement read.

It added that “the System Operator reacted to the sudden drop in generation which led to a dip in frequency, by islanding a section of the grid which includes the Ibom Power Station through which the company continued to feed Uyo, Aba, Itu, Eket, Calabar e.t.c even when the other section of the grid had no supply.

“The operators commenced grid restoration efforts immediately after the incident. At about 21.57 hrs yesterday, the entire part of the grid that was affected by today’s incident was successfully restored.”

It was reported that the grid collapse led to a nationwide blackout in states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

The national grid collapsed for the first time in 2024 on February 4 followed by a nationwide outage on March 28 and another system collapse on April 15.