Nationwide darkness as national grid collapses again

Nigeria’s electricity grid has once again thrown the country into darkness as the government operated system went down Monday afternoon.

The system collapsed at about 1pm cutting down electricity from 4,032.80 megawatts at about 12pm to 43 megawatts 1pm and a meagre 303 megawatts at about 5:00 pm.

Most DisCos confirmed that their feeders are out even as the over 22 electricity plants on the grid were all reading zero megawatts as of 5pm going by the data available on the Transmission Company of Nigeria’s System Network.

The national grid, one of the most embarrassing entities of the power sector has failed many times this year alone even as the grid has collapsed for about 138 times in the last one decade.

Just recently, TCN had rolled out the drums over a misleading celebration of 400 days of no system collapse. About two months ago, the grid system, in a double jeopardy, collapsed at 12:40a.m., only to go down again at 6:40 am. (six hours interval).

Data on grid collapse showed that in 2013, the country recorded 24 power system collapses. The collapse incidents stood at 13 in 2014. In 2015, the grid collapsed 10 times; in 2016, it rose to 28, while 21 cases were recorded in 2017.

Grid collapse cases in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 were 13, 11, four and four, respectively. It collapsed about 10 times between 2022 and this year.

A check by The Guardian as of 1:00 pm on Monday on Ibom power was left on the grid with 43 megawatts. Only Azura was on the grid at 5:00 pm with 303 megawatts.

A number of Distribution Companies (DisCos) confirmed to The Guardian that the grid went down at about 13:00 hour.