The TCN says the tripping of its 330 Kilo Volt (KV) Ugwaji–Apir Double Circuit transmission lines 1 and 2 is responsible for the power outages being experienced in some parts of the North.

The company said the lines tripped off on Monday due to a fault, resulting in a forced power outage affecting North-East, North-West and parts of the North-Central.

TCN spokeswoman Ndidi Mbah disclosed this in a statement on Tuesday.

Ms Mbah said at approximately 4:53 a.m., the Ugwuaji–Markurdi 330kV Line 2 tripped off, and 243MW on that line was transferred to Line 1 on the same route.

Ms Mbah said that at 4:58 a.m., Line 1 tripped off, resulting in a total loss of 468MW.

“By 5:15 a.m. and 5:17 a.m., Line 1 and Line 2 were tried, but they all tripped off immediately on the same relay indication. Following the tripping incidents on Monday, 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 Monday, 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,” she said.

Ms Mbah said the lines patrol team from the Enugu Region of TCN could not commence lines patrol on Monday due to the sit-at-home order directive in the South East for October 21 and 22.

She said the sit-at-home hindered the patrol team’s operation and made it difficult to refuel patrol vehicles for the long-distance line tracing.

However, Ms Mbah said arrangements were made for security operatives to guide the team, who had commenced fault tracing on Tuesday.

“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,” she said.

According to her, 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.

“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.

“This 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,” she said.

(NAN)