JUST-IN: Nationwide blackout as national grid collapses again

The national grid system, operated by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), collapsed in the early hours of Thursday, throwing the entire country into blackout.

It was gathered that the grid collapsed totally around 12:40 a.m. on September 14, 2023, leading to the massive loss of supply to power distributors nationwide.

Checks by National Daily on the grid performance showed power generation dropped to a meagre 48.50 megawatts at 7.00am on Thursday, coming from two out of the over 27 electricity generation plants.

This comes barely a week after TCN had rolled out the drum to celebrate a questionable 400 days of uninterrupted grid stability.

A number of Distribution Companies confirmed that the grid went down at 00:41am, disclosing that most of their feeders were out.

National grid restored after collapse -TCN

As of 7:00am on Thursday, two generating plants were on the grid - Afam VI had 1.60MW while Ibom Power had 46.90MW. All other companies on the grid had zero generation.

At about 1am midnight, the total power on the grid was 35MW, indicating that the country experienced a total collapse.

The grid went to 193MW at about 3am before climbing to 273MW. By 6.00am, the power on the grid had risen to 798.50MW, before plummeting to 48.50MW at 7.00am.

The Enugu Electricity Distribution Company Plc issued a notice titled, 'Notice of Total System Collapse' on Thursday.

In the notice, it said, 'The EEDC wishes to inform her esteemed customers of a total system collapse which occurred at 12:40 am today, September 14, 2023.

'This has resulted in the loss of supply currently being experienced across the network. Due to this development, all our interface TCN (Transmission Company of Nigeria) stations are out of supply, and we are unable to provide service to our customers in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo states.

About a week ago, the transmission firm celebrated what it described as 400 days of power grid stability in Nigeria, as it claimed that the grid witnessed no collapse all through the 400 days.