FG Panel Attributes Grid Collapses to Outdated Equipment and Other Factors

The Chairperson of the investigative committee examining the causes of the recent grid collapses, Nafisatu Asabe Ali, has disclosed that poor maintenance practices, outdated and inadequate equipment, and other factors are behind the repeated failures of the national power grid in recent months.

Ali made this statement during the presentation of the committee’s findings at the Ministry’s headquarters in Abuja on Wednesday, November 6.

She explained that the blackout events on October 14 and 19, 2024, were caused by electrical voltage exceeding the capacity of the equipment.

According to her, the committee’s investigation found that similar issues were affecting all stations across the grid.

Specifically, the committee traced the October 14 and 19 incidents to the failure of lightning arrestors at the Jebba and Oshogbo transmission stations, as well as the explosion of a current transformer (CT) at the Jebba station.

Ali said: “For the event on the 14th, lightning arrestors in Jebba and Oshogbo shattered. The one in Jebba was for the shunt reactor and this was caused by high voltage. Subsequently, we had the tripping of multiple 330kV lines. It kept going until it became major.”

“The remote cause of that is the unavailability of the second reactor in Jebba, and that is because Jebba, by the design of the network and sometimes the topology of the network at a particular time is very prone to high voltage.”

“We had two shunt reactors in Jebba before this event, however, one packed up. It is faulty, and so the voltage rose to about 400KV, which is beyond the threshold. High voltage degrades equipment insulation.”

“If you expose equipment to high voltages for a long time, it degrades the insulation. And, of course, there’s a risk of failure. So, that was a remote cause for that. But the underlying causes are aged equipment. In our findings, we confirmed that Jebba was commissioned in 1968. Some of the equipment was commissioned alongside the substation. So, aged equipment. And maintenance culture is also an issue.”