For an unspecified period of time Wednesday, most parts of the country experienced electricity outage occasioned by a reported collapse of the national power grid.
It is difficult to calculate the quantum of losses that businesses and homes suffered as a result of the prolonged outage.
Indeed two electricity generating companies confirmed the collapse through separate notices sent to their consumers.
Eko Electricity Distribution Company, for example, notified its customers thus: “Dear customer, the present outage is due to a system collapse on the National Grid. TCN (Transmission Company of Nigeria) assures us that supply will be restored shortly.”
The Head of Kano Electricity Distribution Company, Nura Shawai, said: “This is to kindly inform the general public of another system collapse based on information available to us. This occurred today 28/7/2021 at 12:20 pm, as the national grid was disrupted, resulting in national blackout.
“However, the grid controllers have assured that efforts towards restoring supply are in progress, promising speedy reconnection of Kano and other locations to the grid, as soon as the fault is rectified.”
The grid, which is being managed by government-owned Transmission Company of Nigeria, has continued to suffer system collapse over the years amid a lack of spinning reserve that is meant to forestall such occurrences.
Spinning reserve is the generation capacity that is online but unloaded and that can respond within 10 minutes to compensate for generation or transmission outages.