Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has revealed that its 330kV Ugwaji–Apir Double Circuit transmission lines 1 & 2 tripped due to a fault and resulted in a forced power outage that affected the communities in North-east, North-west, and parts of North-central.
Gatekeepers News reports that General Manager Public Affairs of TCN, Ndidi Mbah revealed this through a statement released on Tuesday.
According to Mbah; at about 4:53 a.m. on Monday, Ugwuaji–Markurdi 330kV Line 2 tripped and 243 MW on that line was transferred to Line 1 on the same route.
The general manager explained that at 4:58 a.m., Line 1 also tripped, resulting in a total loss of 468 MW.
She said, “By around 5:15 a.m. and 5:17 a.m. Line 1 and Line 2 were tried, but they all tripped immediately on the same relay indication.”
“Following the tripping incidents yesterday, 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.”
Mbah noted that throughout Monday, Apir team patrolled the line, navigated challenging terrains in search of the fault, and thereby reached as far as the River Benue.
She added, “They were unable to locate the cause of the tripping and have continued in the fault tracing early this morning.”
The general manager said the lines patrol team from Enugu Region of TCN was unable to commence lines patrol on Monday due to the ‘sit-at-home’ directive in the South-east for 21 and 22 October.
Mbah noted that the situation hindered not only the patrol team but also made it difficult to refuel patrol vehicles for the long-distance line trace.
She added, “Arrangements were, however, made for security operatives to guide the team, who have commenced fault tracing this morning.”
The TCN official further said TCN has restored supply to 132kV transmission line from New Haven to Apir, but the 330kV lines remain out of service, thereby affecting power supply in large parts of the Northern region of the country.
Mbah said the TCN Shiroro-Mando transmission line is also down due to security reasons, causing a power outage in the North.
She said, “TCN is making every effort to trace the cause of the outage to enable our engineers to 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, which 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.”
