The Federal Ministry of Power says the immediate and remote causes of the recurrent grid failure are being investigated by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and System Operator ( the operator of the national grid.)
In a press statement signed by Isa Sanusi, Special Assistant on Media to the minister of Power, and issued today, Saturday, the ministry said: “It wishes to notify the general public of the incidence of a system collapse which occurred at 18.30 hour on April 8th, 2022 resulting in outages in many parts of the country.”
It however stated that the process of restoring supply is ongoing with some sections of the national grids already energised and supply restored to customers.
“We wish to assure Nigerians that the Federal Government is working assiduously to deliver on the much needed reform and investment, including SCADA, that is critical to improving the capacity and reliability of the national grid. This in line with Mr. president’s directives on closing the infrastructure deficits in critical sectors “
It would be recalled that the Nigerian electricity industry, again, yesterday, Friday, experienced a total system collapse that threw the whole country into blackout at about 6.30 pm.
That was the third system collapse within a month.
Despite promises from the Federal Government that it has taken steps to solve the problem and assurances from the grid’s manager, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), the situation still occurred.
TCN had announced last month that it had devised alternate grid management methods.
According to the company, its “in-house engineers have deployed a stop-gap solution to improve grid monitoring and acquisition of data from remote stations (power stations and transmission substations) to the National Control Centre.
This was achieved by utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT) solution, and Virtual Private Network (VPN) by using various Internet Service Providers (ISP).
“This temporary use of the Network Automation System was deployed to assist TCN in conveying critical operational measurements data from remote stations to NCC using Web Technology, which is an integral component of the IoT.
So far, the data received from remote stations has enabled NCC to obtain more insight into the situation of the power flow on the grid and has enabled NCC to make decisions that have impacted positively on the security and integrity of the Grid.
The stop-gap solution became necessary as TCN could not access and receive comprehensive operational data of the entire power grid for managing the fast-growing system. The existing inadequate SCADA System cannot provide adequate grid visibility, as parts of the existing SCADA system are moribund and damaged, coupled with an ineffective telecommunication network infrastructure. The fact that several stations were never integrated into the existing SCADA at all, and made grid visibility and management very difficult and inefficient”.
Olusola Bello