Why Power Outages Persist In Northern Nigeria – TCN

The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) announced on Tuesday that power outages in various northern regions resulted from faults in its 330kV Ugwaji–Apir Double Circuit transmission lines 1 and 2.

In a statement, TCN’s General Manager for Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah, explained that the outage primarily impacted communities in the North-east, North-west, and parts of North-central Nigeria.

According to Mbah, at around 4:53 a.m. on Monday, the Ugwuaji–Markurdi 330kV Line 2 experienced a trip, leading to a transfer of 243 MW to Line 1. Subsequently, at 4:58 a.m., Line 1 also tripped, resulting in a total power loss of 468 MW.

“By around 5:15 a.m. and 5:17 a.m. Line 1 and Line 2 were tried, but they all tripped immediately on the same relay indication.

“Following the tripping incidents yesterday, two teams of linesmen were dispatched. One from the Apir Transmission Sub-region and another from the Enugu transmission to expedite fault tracing along the 215 km route, which includes 245 transmission towers,” she said.

Mbah mentioned that while the Apir team patrolled the line throughout Monday, facing difficult terrain, they reached as far as the River Benue without locating the fault.

Unfortunately, the Enugu team was unable to begin their patrol due to a ‘sit-at-home’ order issued in the South-east for October 21 and 22, which not only hindered their progress but also affected the refueling of vehicles needed for the long-distance line tracing.

“Arrangements were, however, made for security operatives to guide the team, who have commenced fault tracing this morning,” she added.

While TCN has managed to restore supply to the 132kV transmission line from New Haven to Apir, the 330kV lines remain offline, significantly affecting power supply across much of Northern Nigeria.

Additionally, the TCN Shiroro-Mando transmission line is also down due to security concerns, further contributing to the outages in the region.

“TCN is making every effort to trace the cause of the outage to enable our engineers to effect repairs and restore bulk power supply through both lines.

“We sincerely apologise to the government and electricity consumers in all the affected states and acknowledge that our patrol teams would have continued their search into the night yesterday, if not for the challenging terrain, which includes swamps and rivers, as well as insecure areas in the forest.

“We reconvened very early this morning with security operatives and have continued the fault tracing to locate and address the cause of the line tripping,” Mbah stated.