National Grid Yet To Collapse In 2022 - Minister

The national grid has not collapsed in 2022, according to Goddy Jedy-Agba, the Minister of State for Power.

Eko Hot Blog reports that he claimed that rather than collapsing, there had just been disruptions.

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This was said by Mr. Jedy-Agba on Thursday when he testified before the House of Representatives Committee on Power regarding the ongoing investigation into the frequent national grid failures.

According to reports, the system meltdown caused four total blackouts throughout the nation this year.

The Minister explained that disruption could cause a blackout.

“So, please let us understand that we have not had any collapse this year, we have had disruptions and disruptions could lead to blackouts, a blackout is not a collapse.

“These ones we have had this year, in fact, four of them, but they have not been collapses, it is disruption. And disruptions have been as a result of the human factors, they could be increment factors, they could be political factors, it could be other factors,” he said.

Mr Jedy-Agba blamed the unavailability of gas for some of the disruptions experienced so far this year.

“Gas supply has been a problem but we are tackling that already because we are discussing with NNPC and Nigerian Gas Corporation. We are coming to an agreement and gas is flowing systematically now to the generating companies and we are seeing a steady increment in generation,” the minister said.

GenCos, TCN Disagree

However, Electricity Generation Companies (GenCos), blamed the incessant national electricity grid collapse on weak transmission lines.

Joy Ogaji, the executive secretary of the association of power generation companies, said the infrastructure Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) cannot cope with the load.

She explained that often, the transmission lines are experiencing volatility which causes disruptions. She added that often, GENCOs are using their infrastructure to transmit load.

“There is service interruption due to the inability of DISCOS to take the load, weak grid conditions forcing apparatus disruption, TCN radial lines….most of TCN lines are radial, not double circuit, thereby limiting the redundancy in the system which increases system instability, Inadequate and old infrastructure to meet demands, transmission and distribution manned by insufficient engineers and technicians, poor communication and coordination of activities between TCN and Discos,” she said.

Also speaking, the Managing Director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, Sule Abdulaziz, contradicted the minister, when he stated that the national grid had collapsed four times in 2022.

He added that Nigeria has a transmission capacity of 8,100 megawatts.

“We have four system collapse, then we have two partial collapses, and this what we submitted.

“On transmission capacity, we have a capacity of 8,100 megawatts. There is no day when a generation company will say we have generated so much megawatts and TCN is unable to evacuate it. We are challenging generation companies to come out if there is any day that we can not evacuate it,” he said.

Following the presentations, the Chairman of the Committee, Magaji Aliyu (APC, Jigawa), stated that the committee will set up a technical committee to prepare a report for the House. He, therefore, adjourned the session sine die.

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