The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) says power supply has been restored in some parts of the country.
Ndid Mbah, TCN’s spokesperson, in a statement on Thursday, said the regions where power has been restored included the west, north-central, south, east, and a large portion of the northern states.
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Earlier today, the national grid suffered a total system collapse for the first time in more than a year, according to the TCN.
The federal government had said the collapse of the national grid was caused by a fire outbreak on the Kainji/Jebba 330 kilovolt (kV) line.
Giving updates on the incident, Mbah said grid restoration has reached advanced stages.
“The Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, hereby notes that grid restoration nationwide is in progress and has reached advanced stages with power supply now available in the West, North Central, South, East, and a large portion of the Northern parts of the country,” she said.
“The power supply restoration is sequel to the total grid collapse, which occurred at 12.35am, this morning, causing outage nationwide, after over 421 days of consistent grid stability.
Mbah said the grid restoration process initially suffered a setback but clarified that this does not amount to another collapse.
The TCN spokesperson explained that in the course of any grid restoration process, challenges may be encountered.
“This happened today while the grid restoration was in progress, but it was promptly addressed,” Mbah said.
“It would be recalled that the last total system collapse recorded was on 20th July 2022, from then to the 13th of September, 2023, (421 days), the system had been stable in spite of the challenges posed by zero spinning reserve and lack of adequate System Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) essential to a strong and stable grid, among others.
“TCN had been able to maintain 421 days of grid stability because it developed and deployed in-house stop gap measures and tools that it has continued to use to manage the nations grid, its stability.
“Meanwhile, the collapse which occurred after a fire incident on Kanji/Jebba 330kV line 2 is being investigated, with the view to forestalling future occurrence and invariably further strengthen the grid.”
Notwithstanding the incident, she said, the TCN is determined to continue to do its best to ensure grid stability.
Grid power supply is erratic in the country, forcing households and businesses to use diesel and petrol generators.
The grid collapsed at least four times in 2022, which authorities blamed on technical problems.
Nigeria has 12 500 MW of installed capacity but produces about a quarter of that.
President Bola Tinubu has promised to improve supply by allowing state governments to build their own power plants in a bid to help spur sluggish economic growth.
Eskom has for decades warned that, should it not implement load shedding to manage an imbalance between supply and demand, the national grid could collapse.
A “cold start” of the power system could take days or even weeks, it has warned.