Fire breaks out in Abuja power transmission station

There was fire outbreak on Sunday at a power transmission substation in Apo, a suburb in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

It was learnt that the fire started at about 1.30pm from a transformer in the substation and persisted for some hours.

The Transmission Company of Nigeria confirmed the incident and stated that one of the 45MVA 132/33kV power transformers in the substation was involved.

It said the burnt transformer was part of those feeding the 33kV feeders of the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company.

The fire was put off by the combined efforts of the federal, FCT and Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation fire service.

“It is, however, still early for TCN to determine if the burnt transformer can be salvaged,” the General Manager, Public Affairs, TCN, Ndidi Mbah, said.

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She said the fire resulted from a direct fault from one of Abuja Disco’s 33kV feeders which had a history of incessant trippings, as the 33kV lacked protection.

The transmission company said it was equally investigating the possibility of transformer protection failure on its 45MVA power transformer.

“The 33kV feeder H13 circuit breaker and current transformer exploded while the 33kV outgoing transformer snapped causing the fire,” TCN stated.

It, however, noted that the Apo Transmission Substation had N-I redundancy and as such, power supply to all the areas that took supply from the substation through AEDC would not be affected by the incident.

Mbah said, “This is because the maximum load taken by AEDC from the burnt 45MVA transformer was 26MW. Maximum load AEDC takes from the old 100MVA in the substation is 56.5MW, while maximum load from the second 100MVA power transformer installed last year is 30.8MW.

“Both, however, can take at full capacity, a total of 160MW against the 86.5.”

The power firm said it was currently transmitting normal supply through the 2x100MVA 330/132kV and the second 45MVA 132/33kv power transformers in the substation.

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It said it had equally loaded the 26MW from the burnt transformer into the 100MVA MBH transformer at the substation and was adequately supplying AEDC without load reduction.