Multiple system collapses from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) have slashed electricity supply to Abuja and environs by 92 percent, resulting in protracted blackouts since Wednesday.
An official of the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) who was contacted provided serial updates on the system collapses, Wednesday night after hitting 30megawatts (mw) low from its about 400mw allocation.
The first system collapse according to officials occurred around 1400hours, cutting supply from the 11.5percent power allocated to the Distribution company (Disco) from the national grid.
He said “we have had a system black out since 1400hours and restoration has yet to begin. We are still not furnished with information from the TCN on the cause. We will brief you as information is received.”
Another distress call was received at dusk after an observed improvement the restoration process. “This is to advise that the process of restoration has begun. 30mw has been allocated since 1605hours,” the Disco announced.
Meanwhile, the situation worsened around 8pm on Wednesday when Daily Trust gathered that blackouts rocked sensitive power installations in the city centre.
In a reaction, the Disco said: “We wish to advise of another system collapse since 2200hours. No information is available about the cause and restoration is yet to commence.”
The situation wavered till early yesterday morning when the Disco alerted of a continuous collapse that had stalled power supply within Abuja and the three other coverage states of Nasarawa, Kogi, and Niger.
The media head of the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC), Malam Ahmed Shekarau in a text message said TCN was yet to update the Disco on the multiple incidences that had deprived customers of power supply for over 15hours.
Residential electricity customers (R2) in the tariff system pay between N14 and N15 per kilowatt hour (kwh) for power consumption within Abuja Disco. The 15-hour collapse which started around 2:00pm and lasted till 5:00am yesterday short changed the over 300,000 electricity customers by more than N210 per customer.
Efforts made to ascertain the cause of the many collapses from TCN officials yesterday failed as the director of Networks Engr. Gumel did not pick his calls or respond to text message.
But another official of TCN in a response said it was not a system collapse as efforts are on to fix the undisclosed technical issue.
As at press time, Shekarau said supply has risen to 120mw but was advised by the National Control Centre (NCC), Osogbo, an arm of TCN that monitors the nation’s electricity grid “not to take more than that now so as not to break down the system.”
As blackouts persist in most of the coverage areas, Abuja Disco said it has 247mw available power but would not take all of it to avoid further collapse incidences as advised.