Blackout again as national power grid suffers 12th collapse in 2024
Onome Amuge
Nigeria’s power grid suffered yet another setback on Wednesday as it collapsed for the 12th time in 2024, plunging the nation into darkness and adding to the growing list of blackouts this year.
Prior to the latest incident, data from the nation’s electricity sector had announced 11 previous grid collapses between January to November 2024.
Nigeria’s National Grid, announced on its social media (X) handle that the grid had collapsed at 2:09 pm on Wednesday.
The grid handler indicated that the recovery process had already begun, stating, “The major grid setback has occurred and the restoration is to commence.”
Confirming the troubling development,Ikeja Electric, in a public notice stated, “Dear Esteemed Customer, please be informed that we experienced a system outage today 11 December, 2024 at 13:32 Hrs affecting supply within our network. Restoration of supply is ongoing in collaboration with our critical stakeholders. Kindly bear with us.”
Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) also reacted to the incident, stating, ” Dear valued customers, we wish to inform you that a system disturbance occurred on the national grid at 1:32pm today causing power outage across our franchise areas.
“While gradual restoration of power supply has commenced, be assured that we are coordinating closely with relevant stakeholders to restore power fully as soon as the grid is stabilized.
Jos Disco also informed its customers of the situation, stating, “Dear esteemed Customer(s). The current outage being experienced within our franchise states is a result of loss of power supply from the national grid. The loss of power supply occured this afternoon at about 13:33 hours of today, Wednesday, 11th December 2024, hence the loss of power supply on all our feeders.
“We hope to restore normal power supply to our esteemed customers as soon as the grid supply is restored back to normalcy.”
Data from the Independent System Operator (ISO), a division of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), indicated a significant drop in power generation following the grid collapse on Wednesday.
According to the ISO website, all of the grid’s generation power plants experienced a complete shutdown by 2pm, a sharp contrast to the 1pm production figures, which showed the plants contributing an average of 3,087 megawatts to the grid.