The Nigerian Government has attributed the national grid collapse on Saturday to an explosion of a current transformer at the Jebba transmission station around 08:15 am.
In a joint statement from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), it was revealed that this marked the third grid failure in just seven days.
NERC provided an update that significant power supply had been restored in 33 states and the Federal Capital Territory by 1:00 pm on Saturday, despite the earlier outage.
The Commission expressed concern over the frequent grid disturbances, acknowledging that these incidents have reversed progress made in infrastructure improvement and grid stability. It further explained that the outage was triggered by the transformer explosion, which led to a cascade of power plant shutdowns due to a loss of load.
Efforts to restore the system were promptly initiated, and as part of a broader reform agenda, NERC highlighted the ongoing unbundling of the System Operator (SO) function from the Transmission Company of Nigeria under the Electricity Act 2023. This separation is expected to foster better discipline in grid management and lead to optimized infrastructure investments.
NERC also committed to holding an investigative public hearing to explore the root causes of the recurring grid failures. The date and venue of the hearing will be announced soon, with stakeholders encouraged to participate.
Similarly, TCN confirmed that the transformer explosion at the Jebba transmission station had caused the temporary grid disturbance, but reassured the public that the protection system had worked to contain the damage, and full power supply had been restored.
The grid has experienced multiple collapses this year, with at least eight incidents in total, sparking efforts to identify long-term solutions.
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