GRID COLLAPSE: TCN says blackout will continue

The Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, has said the nationwide blackout experienced in most parts of the country on Wednesday and Thursday following a collapse of the power grid will continue in some parts of the country as the grid is still unstable.

The Managing Director of the TCN, Usman Mohammed made this known in Abuja on Friday.

Mohammed, who explained that the process of restoring the grid takes time. said: “Now if you look at where we are now, we are still at the process of restoration. We have reached almost the whole of the country now but I cannot tell that we are at the stage where one can say the grid is stable.

“This is because as we restore supply to a particular place, distribution also has to pick the load and these activities are done gradually. When we are restoring supply after a system collapse, we also don’t allow them to pick the load all of a sudden because the generators are coming in gradually.

“However, right now, I can tell you that we have reached the whole country and up to Niger and Cotonou, but still at that I can tell you that we are not at the normal state yet. Usually, it takes about 24 hours for us to reach the normal state.”

Speaking on the enormity of the grid collapse of Wednesday and Thursday, Mohammed said it was the worst he had ever encountered since he took over the leadership of TCN.

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He said: “Since I became the MD of TCN, the system instability recorded in the last two days (Wednesday and Thursday) was the worst, because there was no time that we had a system instability where the restoration took a longer time like this.

“And the reason is  – we had a high voltage caused by the fact that electricity load was being rejected by the Discos. And the load was not being picked because of weak distribution network. So that is the reason for that instability.

“We cannot have a stable grid unless we have adequate investment on the distribution side and that is why we have been calling for a recapitalization of the distribution companies. They need to have a commensurate investment on the network.”

 

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