Dark weekend looms as national grid suffers 3rd collapse in 1 week

Many Nigerians might be in for a long and dark weekend as the national grid collapsed again on Saturday for the third time in a week.

The latest grid disturbance occurred around 8:16 am when power generation dropped to 00MW, plunging businesses, homes, and critical infrastructures into darkness.

The nationwide blackout comes four days after the grid tripped off as it was being restored after an earlier collapse on Monday.

Checks confirmed that power generation stood at 3,042 megawatts at 8 am and peaked at 3,968MW at 7 am.

However, generation dropped to 47MW as of 9 am, with allocation to power distribution companies standing at 0.00MW at the time of filing this report.

However, data from the Nigerian System Operator’s portal (niggrid.org), revealed that the grid recorded an unprecedented zero Megawatts (MW) as of 8:16 am today.

The data also revealed that all 22 generation companies (GenCos) are down as of the time of this report.

The cause of the latest disturbance could not be ascertained as of press time as the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has yet to comment on the development.

The collapse marked the eighth time the national grid has collapsed in 2024, highlighting the age-long challenges plaguing Nigeria's power sector.

The first grid collapse of the year occurred on February 4 at approximately 11:51 AM, as the capacity on the TCN-managed grid plummeted from 2,407 megawatts to just 31MW by noon, before it completely shut down by 1 PM.