Chances of lager part of the country remaining in darkness for too long have been cut short following early Monday completion of repairs at the nation’s grid system which got bad last week Thursday.
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) told Business Hilights on Monday evening that the restoration of the grid was almost completed and explained that the total collapse was due to tripping of three generator units at the Egbin power generation station in Lagos.
Daily report on the power sector gathered on Friday showed that the grid collapsed totally on Thursday, September 28, 2017, after the country generated 3,515 megawatts of electricity the preceding day.
According to TCN, “A total system collapse was recorded on September 28, 2017 at 20:03hours. Reports obtained from stations and the sequence of events generated by the SCADA system indicated that the system collapse was triggered by the tripping of Egbin Units ST4, ST6 and ST5 at 20:03:15, 20:03:32 and 20:03:34, respectively”.
“By this incident, the Nigerian electric power grid lost generation completely before restoration commenced at 20:22hours.”
TCN noted that a post mortem analysis of the event indicated that grid generation was curtailed to about 4,262.7MW prior to the disturbance due to capacity under-utilisation, as the operational capability required to maintain grid stability had waned.
The development further left the system vulnerable to the extent that perturbations of this magnitude resulted in severe system frequency dip that culminated in system collapse.
Continuing, the company said “The analysis clearly indicated that there was insufficient level of spinning reserve provided by grid-connected generation companies arising from low tariffs for providing ancillary services”.
TCN said it had filed an application to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) for an extraordinary tariff review, stressing that only this would serve as a means of ensuring that generation companies were incentivised to provide sufficient spinning reserves and other ancillary services critical for managing the national grid.
