- Daily businesses and domestic activities in jeopardy
BY EDMOND ODOK – It is certainly not the best of times for residents of Nigeria’s capital city, Abuja, and its environs with the now constancy in the collapse of electrical supply across the country.
As of Tuesday, September 19, 2023, when the national grid reportedly collapsed again, the FCT residents were left in darkness as power output fell from a peak of 3,594.60 megawatts (MW) at midnight to a mere 42.7MW.
Complaints about the regularity of these outages are now coming in torrents with many residents grumbling that their daily lives have been impacted negatively, especially in terms of their ability to conduct business, work, study, and undertake other important productive activities.
According to trusted sources within the Power Ministry, only the Delta Power plant had 41.00 megawatts of operational power on the grid at noon on Tuesday, with Afam recording a paltry 1.7 megawatts of electricity.
Coming less than five days after the country was plunged into darkness as the grid collapsed twice in a space of about 12 hours, there has been no official statement on the cause of this latest development.
The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, had blamed the last collapse on a fire incident in a series of tweets on his X handle. The Minister said the unfortunate development was caused by a fire outbreak on Kainji/Jebba 330kV line, leading to the loss of about 356.63 megawatts in the nation’s generation capacity.
The tweets read thus; “At 00:35 Hrs this morning, a Fire outbreak with an explosion sound was observed on Kainji/Jebba 330kV line 2 (Cct K2J) blue phase CVT & Blue phase line Isolator of Kainji/Jebba 330kV line1 was observed burning.
“This led to sharp drops in frequency from 50.29Hz to 49.67 Hz at 0:35:06Hrs with Jebba generation loss of 356.63MW”.
Offering further insights on the incident, the Power Minister explained that Kainji started dropping the load from 451.45 megawatts at 00:35:07 Hrs to zero, adding; “At 00:41 Hrs frequency dropped further from 49.37 Hz to 48.41 Hz resulting in the system collapse of the grid.
“We are on top of the situation and speedy restoration is in progress. The fire has been fully arrested and over half of the connections are now up and the rest will be fully restored in no time.
“My sincere appreciation to those who responded or expressed concern via different channels and the team of Engineers for their prompt response to the situation and work done so far. Let’s get the restoration work completed as soon as possible.”
Considered as posing a significant setback to the nation’s economic and developmental progress, the latest grid failure marks the third in less than a month, following two incidents just five days ago, which left the nation in total darkness for extended hours.
Sector stakeholders and commentators have continued to express concerns that the recurring grid collapses are having huge consequences on the nation’s economy.
The consensus is that with the constant countrywide blackouts, many households, being deprived of electricity supplies for their daily businesses, are now facing serious economic hardship further worsened by the fuel subsidy removal.
