The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) disclosed that it has accumulated $4 million in damage costs and repairs following fire incidents at Birnin Kebbi and Sokoto that left two transformers destroyed on Thursday night.
This was disclosed by the TCN in a statement on Friday after its Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, TCN, Dr. Sule AbdulAzeez, described the damages as colossal, coming after the national grid collapse earlier this week.
The transformer affected includes a 90MVA (330KV/132KV) and a 60MVA (132KV/33KV) transformer damaged as a result of the fire incident which are both valued at 4 million dollars.
Damaged infrastructure
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, of TCN, Dr. Sule AbdulAzeez, described the damages as colossal, stating that he received a phone call Thursday night that there was a fire incident in the Kebbi TCN substation, noting that communication lasted throughout the night until when the fire was quenched on Friday morning at about 7 a.m.
- “That’s why I felt I must come down here myself, as well as the Executive Director Special Service Provider and General Manager in-charge of Kaduna region to have firsthand information about the incident,”
He added that an investigation committee comprising professionals and specialists would be established to find the cause of the unfortunate incident, urging that the TCN had lost two transformers and a control.
- “This station is also serving Sokoto not only Kebbi. So, the first thing we are going to do is to back feed Sokoto through Talatan Mafara in Zamfara State.
- “Here in Kebbi also, very quickly, we have already mobilized our engineers, in fact; they have already started opening the cable tranches.
- “Again, we have a transformer here which was supplying Niger Republic, now, it’s not supplying any place, so, we are going to use that transformer to make sure that people of Kebbi get light as quickly as possible.”
Operation time
Abdul Azeez revealed it would take the company two weeks to the arrangement of transformers and other things to restore normal power supply, citing that the TCN is still looking at the possibility of backfeeding Kebbi from Sokoto and that can be done in two or three days.
- “By the grace of God Almighty we are going to resolve the problem as soon as possible.
Nairametrics reported that TCN said that its attempts to restore the national grid after the initial collapse, suffered a setback but the challenge was promptly addressed, they said:
- “The Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, hereby notes that grid restoration nationwide is in progress and has reached advanced stages with power supply now available in the West, North Central, South, East, and a large portion of the Northern parts of the country.
- “The power supply restoration is the sequel to the total grid collapse, which occurred at 12.35 am, this morning, causing an outage nationwide, after over 421 days of consistent grid stability. In the course of the grid restoration, the process initially suffered a setback; this did not amount to another collapse.
- “In the course of any grid restoration process, challenges may be encountered. This happened today while the grid restoration was in progress, but it was promptly addressed.
- “Meanwhile, the collapse which occurred after a fire incident on Kanji/Jebba 330kV line 2 is being investigated, with the view to forestalling future occurrence and invariably further strengthening the grid. The incident notwithstanding, TCN is determined to continue to do its best to ensure grid stability.”
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