BY AKUDORO GLORIA
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) on Thursday convened a public hearing where stakeholders brainstormed on strategies to address incessant grid disturbances in the country.
This development came after the recent escalating incidence of grid disturbances that often lead to marked outage in several states. Thus, reversing many of the gains recently achieved in reducing infrastructure deficit and improving grid stability.
According to NERC, this action is in line with Section 48, subsections 1 and 2 of the Electricity Act 2023 (Amended), which mandates its to hold public hearing on critical issue relating to Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI).
In his remarks, the NERC Chairman, Sanusi Garba, said that the Commission is passionate about identifying the short term and long term action that needs to be taken from this hearing that would help stabilizing the national electricity grid.
“Today we are here again to truly deep dive towards finding a final solution to what is a very embarrassing moment for the country. We have had this story of infrastructure is old, is frigil, low generation and free Governor control. All these are high texturist that seem to repeat over and over again without finding a solution to a very embarrassing moment.
“The reality is that what is truly happening is impacting on the viability of not only the GenCos that generates the energy and capacity but also to the distribution companies. And most importantly it is also impacting on the quality of supplies to end customers,” he stated.
During the public hearing, NERC Chairman questioned TCN’s maintenance management system and its inability to put in place preventable measures that could have prevented the grid disturbance encountered last week.
He charged the management of TCN to focus on prioritizing the resources within their disposal on maintaining and improving old infrastructure to ensure stability of supply, rather than focusing on expansion plans while existing ones suffer fragility and breakdown.
In her presentation, Engr. Nafisat Ali, the representative of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) and Executive Director of System Operation, mentioned that two recent incidents caused widespread outages due to equipment failure.
She said in the last 10 months, only six grid disturbances have been recorded, out of which four were caused by generation and two caused by transmission.
In her analysis of the causes of grid failure from 2015 to the present, Engr. Ali highlighted challenges to include: sudden loss of generation due to inadequate gas supply and technical/mechanical fault; lack of Free Governor Control in the generators; and lack of spinning reserve.
Other challenges highlighted under transmission are obsolete equipment; insecurity and vandalism of power transmission equipment and other related facilities; lack of transmission line redundancy, in the case where some critical transmission lines are single circuits and need to be doubled. They are: Onitsha-Alaoji 330KV line, Osogbo-Ihovbor 330KV line, Ihovbor-Benin 330KV line, and Mando-Kumbotso 330KV line.
To mitigate future events, the TCN representative called for implementation of the SCADA system, review of defence plan (UFLS) scheme, sufficient availability of gas to be top national priority, increase security measures to combat vandalism of infrastructure, NERC to mandate DisCos to take up contracted load allocation to ensure reliability electricity supply for customers and prioritize expansion and upgrading of the transmission transmission network to enhance capacity and allow for redundancy.
“Challenges in the value chain must be wholistically addressed to resolve the disturbances while cooperation of all stakeholders is a must for a largely manually operated grid,” she stated.
Also speaking, the CEO of the Association of Power Generating Companies (APGC), Dr. Joy Ogaji, while presenting some recommendation, disclose that between 2015 to date, Nigeria recorded 162 national grid collapse.
Dr. Ogaji who stressed on the disparities in data captured by TCN, advocated for transparency and proper capturing of data by the company. She added that free governor control cannot cure the frequency code challenges.
A representative of distribution companies (DisCos), Umar Sani Bello, from the Jos Electricity Distribution Company (JEDC), lamented the impact of the grid collapse on its operations and urged the commission to ensure a holistic solution is provided.
Furthermore, private sector intervenors recommended concerted efforts to address obsolete equipment, transition to a smart grid, and tackle attitudinal issues hindering optimal grid operation.