SOME parts of the country were on Tuesday thrown into darkness following another system collapse of the National Grid, causing a nationwide outage as the entire system crashed due to the loss of 1,100 megawatts from a 3,700mw peak generation earlier recorded.
This was just as airline operators in Nigeria yesterday warned that they have only three days left to shut down operations over lingering scarcity of aviation fuel.
For the power sector, as at yesterday afternoon, the system was yet to pick up load, according to a grid operations report, which showed that just three Generation Companies (Gencos) were trying to restart, but were yet to generate any energy.
It was further gathered that the Minister of Power, Mr. Abubakar Aliyu, called an emergency meeting yesterday to resolve all outstanding issues with the stakeholders in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) as a result of the worsening power situation.
According to the grid operation trend, of the active 25 Gencos on the grid, 19 were producing power as of 6am, when the grid had 3,867.60MW, but that began to reduce gradually until it dropped to 2,761.20MW by 10am after six Gencos went down, leaving just 13, before crashing to zero at 10.40 am.
Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC) also confirmed the partial collapse of the grid in a public notice.
The electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) said the collapse of the grid occured at 5.10 p.m on Tuesday.
They said the collapse had disrupted power supply within their networks with their customers experiencing blackouts.
“Dear esteemed customers, we would like to inform you of another system collapse on the national grid which occurred at 5:10 p.m today (Tuesday).
“We are monitoring the situation and will continue to provide updates. Once again we apologise for the inconvenience,” Eko DisCo said in a statement.
Ofulue said Ikeja Electric had received notification of the collapse and was waiting for the grid to be restored.
The collapse is happening barely 48 hours after the national grid collapsed at 10.40 a.m on Monday resulting in blackouts in some parts of the country.
Supply was, however, restored to the grid at 12.20 p.m by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).