Nationwide Outage As National Grid Collapses Again After Loss Of 1,100MW

There’s been a nationwide power outage following the collapse of the national electricity grid on Monday March 14.

The national electricity grid crashed to zero following its loss of 1,100 megawatts (MW) from a 3,700MW peak generation earlier.

According to a report from Daily Trust, as at 1pm today, Monday March 14, the system was yet to pick up load as just three Generation Companies (GenCos) were trying to restart but yet to generate any energy.

According to the grid operation trend, of the active 25 GenCos on the grid, 19 of them were producing power as of 6am when the grid had 3,867.60MW but that began to reduce gradually until it dropped to 2,761.20MW by 10am after six GenCos went down, leaving just 13 GenCos.

At least 1,100MW was lost from the 3867MW peak generation when the five GenCos shut down. The affected plants include Azura-Edo IPP (Gas) which was generating 447MW earlier. Shiroro hydropower which had 300MW earlier went off; Trans-Amadi (Gas) lost 92MW; Alaoji NIPP (Gas) lost 75MW; Ihovbor NIPP (Gas) also lost 101MW.

Some Electricity distribution companies (DisCos) in the country have also confirmed that the recent collapse of the grid which occurred by 10:40am, disrupted power supply within their networks.

Eko Electricity Distribution Company Limited (EKEDC) apologised to customers and promised to keep them updated on the situation.

EKEDC tweeted;

“Dear esteemed customer, we regret to inform you of a total system collapse on the national grid at 10:40 am today, leading to outages across our network.

“We are closely monitoring the situation with our TCN partners to determine the cause and a timeline for resolution.”

Enugu Electricity Distribution Plc also disclosed that its customers in five states have no power supply.

The DisCo tweeted;

“The Enugu Electricity Distribution PLC (EEDC) wishes to inform her esteemed customers in the South East of a general system collapse which occurred this morning, Monday, 14th March, 2022 at 10:40 am.

“This is the reason for the loss of supply currently being experienced across the network.

“Consequently, all our outgoing feeders are out and supply to our customers in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo States are affected by this development.

“We are on standby and awaiting signal from the National Control Centre (NCC) for restoration of supply.”

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Kaduna Electricity company also confirmed the national grid collapse via its Twitter handle. The company tweeted;

“We regret to inform you that the power outage being experienced in our franchise states is sue to system collapse of the national grid.”

Following the development, the minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu on Monday March 14 held an emergency meeting with stakeholders in the power sector over the erratic power supply in the country.

The meeting which was held after the national grid collapsed again, was attended by a delegation from power generation companies, Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET), Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), Shell and other stakeholders in the power value chain.

Speaking at the meeting, the Minister told stakeholders that they must work together to make electricity stable. He also said the federal government would not relent in its effort to ensure improvements in the power sector.

Aliyu said;

“This meeting was summoned to address the current electricity situation in the country which we are not happy about.

We must find a solution so that Nigerians will have electricity. I want us to have the patience to talk to each other, not blaming each other.”