Nationwide blackout as Nigeria’s electricity grid collapses

Business A.M

Nigeria has been thrown into a nationwide power outage following the complete collapse of the national grid system, operated by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

Business A.M gathered that the grid , located in Osogbo,Osun State, plunged to 273 megawatts of electricity coming from two out of the over 27 electricity generation in the early hours of Thursday.

This is as a number of distribution companies (DISCOs) confirmed that the grid went down at about 12:41 A.M, leading to a significant loss of power supplied to their feeders.

According to reports, the total power on the grid stood at 35MW at about 1 am, indicating that the country experienced a total collapse.Afterwards, the grid rose to 193MW at about 3am before climbing to 273MW. The power on the grid rose further to 798.50MW by 6.00am, before plunging to 48.50MW at 7.00am.

As at 7:00 am on Thursday, only two generating plants were reported to be on the grid,Afam VI with 1.60MW while Ibom Power had 46.90MW, while all other companies on the grid had zero generation.

Though the TCN has yet to give an official statement regarding the collapse of the grid at the time of filing this report, some electricity distribution companies have reacted to the development.

The Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC), in a notice, signed by Emeka Ezeh,the head of corporate communications, EEDC,noted that a full system collapse occurred at 12:40 am, on Thursday,September 14, 2023.

The notice titled ‘Total System Collapse’,explained that the development resulted in the loss of supply currently being experienced across the network. As a result, it noted that all its interface TCN stations are out of supply, meaning that the electricity distribution company was rendered incapable of providing electric service to its customers in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo states.

“We are on standby awaiting detailed information of the collapse and restoration of supply from the National Control Centre, Osogbo,” the company stated.