More details emerge on collapse of national grid

On Sunday evening major cities in the country were thrown into darkness with south-east states the worst as the national grid collapsed for the fifth time in 2022.

Checks on data from the Nigeria Electricity System Operator an arm of the Federal Government’s power transmission company showed that the grid collapse occurred on Sunday at about 6:32pm

NESO data revealed that the National grid actually crashed from a peak of 3,703 megawatts at 5am to as low as 9MW on Sunday by 6.49pm.

Various Discos including Enugu Electricity Distribution Company Plc, Abuja Electricity Distribution Company, and Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company, among others, had confirmed the grid collapse in various messages on Sunday night.

The Latest data on Monday however revealed that engineers from the Transmission Company of Nigeria have recovered the power generation to the peak of 3,333.60 MW.

READ ALSO: Nigeria’s power grid collapses for third time under one month

Stakeholders have expressed concerns over the continuous dependency of the power sector on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) seven years after the sector was handed over to the private investors.

The experts who insisted that the sector would have collapsed without loans and interventions by the apex bank noted that it was high time for the sector to stand on its own.

Recall that the CBN had launched the Power and Aviation Intervention Fund (PAIF), hovering at about N300 billion, Nigerian Electricity Market Stabilisation Facility (NEMSF) at about N213 billion, N140 billion Solar Connection Intervention Facility, over N600 billion tariff shortfall intervention as well as a recent N120 billion intervention designed for mass metering among others.

The Federal Government had similarly released N600 billion for the power sector to bridge shortfall in the payment of monthly invoices by key stakeholders in the sector with another N701 billion CBN facility deployed in March 2017 as Power Assurance Guarantee.

READ ALSO: Power grid collapsed over 90 times under Buhari

Earlier this year, The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) says it has disbursed over N1.3 trillion to support power supply to Nigerians in the last five years.

Wunmi Iledare, an energy expert, had earlier noted that interventions by the CBN as a repayable loan was understandable, but added that the current structure of the electricity market in the country could mar the interventions.

Stephen Kanabe, economic analyst, had similarly told reporters the intervention by apex bank in the distribution segment of the nation’s power sector, especially metering, would contribute to significantly reducing the lingering challenges of poor infrastructure and arbitrary billing of end-users.

Habeeb Jaiyeola, associate director, Energy, Utilities and Resources at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), has insisted that providing financial support to industries, especially the power sector, remained a welcome development.

Although, Jaiyeola noted that the need to ensure that the facilities are duly paid back, he said government’s continued support to power sector will have an overall impact on the sector to facilitate the required progress, adding that the Federal Government also has equity ownership in the DisCos.

He urged the authorities to clearly outline and monitor the interventions to ensure it achieved projected objectives, adding that the National Mass Metering Programme for instance may need to be checked against some of its set objectives in terms of coverage, availability, and completion time.

According to him, infrastructure funds are used the world over for the development of critical infrastructure which guarantees constant returns on investment for investors, adding that a critical element of the success of these funds is adequate planning and strategic contracting.