Six North Eastern States Thrown Into Total Darkness As Jos-Gombe Transmission Line Trips Off.

*** TCN lines crew on patrol to identify and rectify fault

By CLEMENT NWOJI, Abuja

North Eastern States of Nigeria have been hit by total power blackout following the tripping off of the Jos-Gombe 330KV transmission lines on Saturday evening.

The Transmission Line, which had just undergone Annual Scheduled Maintenance, linked the North Eastern States including Bauchi, Gombe, Adamawa Borno, Yobe and Taraba which are now currently out of power supply.

The line tripping occurred at about 19:09, 22nd September, 2018 after it was re-energized, explained Mrs Ndidi Mbah, General Manager, Public Affairs of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

She said that all efforts were being made by the company’s line engineering crew to resolve the problem and restore the transmission line accordingly.

She said the TCN viewed power outage with seriousness and had to undertake the Annual Scheduled Maintenance of the 330kV transmission line from Jos to Gombe.

After the maintenance work has been completed by the combined engineering maintenance crew from Gombe and Jos Transmission Substations, the transmission line was reclosed and energized at about 15:09 hours Saturday 22nd September, 2018.

At 19:09 hours however, the line tripped due to fault on the line. TCN quickly initiated the patrol of the transmission line to detect and rectify the fault.

The release noted that as at 18:30pm, today, the line engineering crew patrolling the Jos part of the 330kV transmission line has completed investigations on that part of the line, while the Gombe part of the transmission line trace is still ongoing.

She said that the entire line cannot be energized until both ends of the line trace have been concluded, assuring that once completed, the findings would be analyzed and faults cleared, TCN will then re-energized the transmission line.

TCN sincerely regrets inconveniences caused by the outage and also apologizes to the Government and people of the six North Eastern states affected by the outage, while assuring that efforts are ongoing to ensure a speedy completion of the transmission line trace and faults clearance in other to reclose and energize the 330kV transmission line.