Poor Transmission Caused Nine System Collapses — Discos

• Poor Transmission Caused Nine System Collapses — Discos

The nine system collapses so far recorded in 2019 were caused by the poor transmission network protection of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, power distribution companies stated on Wednesday.

Speaking on behalf of the 10 Discos, the Executive Director, Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors, Sunday Oduntan, described the incident of June 30, 2019, at TCN substation in Benin City, which caused a fire outbreak and led to system collapse, as regrettable.

He, however, stated that the Discos were available to offer their technical assistance to TCN in order to ensure that power consumers were not kept in darkness.

ANED said the failure of the TCN Benin Substation on Sunday was the second of such occurrence in the same city within a year.

It said there was a trend of burnt transmission stations and failed transmission substation incidents in Lagos, Calabar, Abuja, Enugu and Onitsha as of May 8, 2019, due to inadequate transmission protection mechanisms and procedures.

The Discos also expressed displeasure over TCN’s practice of arbitrary load dumping on power distributors whenever the TCN was having challenges in managing energy on its grid, causing a myriad of commercial and technical problems.

They said these deficiencies of TCN were captured in a July 2017 System Adequacy Report published by the Independent System Operator, a section of TCN.

The body argued that a properly protected transmission system would isolate faults.

“Unfortunately, the resultant effect is that we have experienced the ninth total blackout in Nigeria this year (five times in January, once in April, twice in May and once in June), a rate of transmission failure that is in excess of one blackout per month – far beyond any international standard,” Oduntan said.

The Discos stated that over 100 partial and total transmission system collapses had been recorded since the sector was privatised in 2013.

On Sunday, TCN stated that the national power grid experienced a system collapse at 9.10am that day.

TCN attributed the collapse to high voltage following the massive drop of load by electricity distribution companies.

The General Manager, Public Affairs, TCN, Ndidi Mbah, had stated that the high voltage also caused a fire incident in the 75MX reactor in the Benin Substation, Sapele Road, Benin City, Edo State.