DisCos blame TCN’s load shedding for protracted power outage

“Dear customer, we regret to inform you of the ongoing load shedding from our TCN partners.”

HILLARY ESSIEN • April 3, 2021

Power Grid used to illustrate the story (Credit: Nigerian Guardian)

The prevailing power outage in many parts of the country has been blamed on load shedding by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN). Nigerians, especially Lagos residents, have taken to social media with complaints of lack of electricity in the past week.

Electricity distribution companies based in Lagos released updates, informing Nigerians that they are embarking on ”load shedding’ because they are not receiving sufficient power from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

Ikeja Electric explained that: “The outage you may be experiencing is due to ongoing load shedding from TCN, in a bid to maintain system balance. This has created a shortfall in the power allocation we receive from the national grid.”

Eko Electricity (EKEDC) also informed customers of the load shedding, saying : “Dear customer, we regret to inform you of the ongoing load shedding from our TCN partners.”

Load shedding is usually carried out to prevent the collapse of the grid, it results in the deliberate shutdown of power in some parts of a distribution system.

On Monday, EKEDC had stated that total allocation from the grid to Ajah, Lekki and Alagbon transmission substations fell to 162 megawatts as against 300MW.

It said, “We regret to inform you of the ongoing load shedding from our TCN partners. We received: 42MW – as against 120MW at Ajah T/S; 70MW – as against 80MW at Lekki T/S; and 50MW as against 130MW at Alagbon T/S.

The operational data obtained from the Nigerian Electricity System Operator showed that the power plants on the national grid generated 4,293.1MW as of 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday, compared to 4,288.2MW on Tuesday.

On April 1, the highest voltage recorded was at 353kV while the lowest Voltage was 300kV. The report set the national peak demand forecast at 28,850.00MW and total grid generation installed capacity is 13,014.14MW

Last year, The Minister of Power, Engineer Sale Mamman, disclosed that Nigeria’s installed grid power generation capacity has grown from 8,000mw to 13,000mw.

Attempts to reach the Transmission Company of Nigeria proved abortive at the time of filing this report.

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