North East, North West, North Central In Blackouts As Connecting Transmission Lines Trip, TCN Explains

… Insecurity, Difficult Terrain Hinder Fault Identification, Repair

The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has disclosed the tripping of 330kV DC Transmission Line giving rise to power outage in North East, North West, and Parts of North Central geopolitical zones of the country .

It said prompt identification of the faulty points and rectification for resumption of bulk power supply to the zones were being hindered by spate of insecurity and difficult terrain.

A statement by the TCN General Manager Public Affairs, Mrs Ndidi Mbah, Tuesday morning, said the incident occured 4.53 am Tuesday.

She said that TCN’s 330kV Ugwaji–Apir Double Circuit transmission lines 1& 2 tripped due to a fault, resulting in a forced power outage affecting the North East, North West and parts of North Central.

According to her, “At approximately 4:53am, the Ugwuaji–Markurdi 330kV Line 2 tripped and 243 MW on that line was transferred to Line 1 on the same route. At 4:58am, Line 1 also tripped, resulting in a total loss of 468 MW. By around 5:15am and 5:17am 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.

“Throughout yesterday, the Apir team patrolled the line, navigating challenging terrains in search of the fault, reaching as far as the River Benue. They were unable to locate the cause of the tripping and have continued in the fault tracing early this morning.

“Meanwhile, the lines patrol team from Enugu Region of TCN were unable to commence lines patrol yesterday due to the ‘sit-at-home’ directive in the South East for October 21st and 22nd, 2024. This hindered not only the patrol team but also made it difficult to refuel patrol vehicles for the long distance line trace. Arrangements were, however, made for security operatives to guide the team, who have commenced fault tracing this morning.

“Currently, TCN has restored supply to the 132kV transmission line from New Haven to Apir, but the 330kV lines remain out of service, impacting power supply in the Northern region of the country. Sadly, the TCN Shiroro-Mando transmission line is also down due to security reasons, causing power outage in the North.

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

She appealed for understanding of the government and residents of the affected areas, saying ” We sincerely apologize 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.”