Adewale Sanyaolu
A major power outage has hit many parts of Lagos and neighboring Ogun State over a gas pipeline leakage leading to a drastic drop in power generation.
Statistics from the Advisory Power Team, Office of the Vice President indicated that peak generation attained on Thursday was 4,546 mega watts (MW) as against 4,624MW generated on Wednesday, representing a drop of 67MW.
Other statistics from the Advisory Power Team for Thursday revealed that 1,988.21MW was not generated due to unavailability of gas while another 3, 227.5MW was not generated due to unavailability of transmission infrastructure, 715 MW not generated due to high frequency resulting from unavailability of distribution infrastructure and 4. 0 MW was recorded as losses due to water management
In all, the report disclosed that the power sector lost an estimated N1, 407,000,000 (One Billion Four Hundred and Seven Million Naira) on April 25, 2019 due to insufficient gas supply, distribution infrastructure and transmission infrastructure.
Reacting to the power outage in some parts of Lagos and Ogun States, Head of Public Affairs, Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Mrs. Ndidi Mbah, said a gas pipeline leakage affected supply of gas to power plants in Olorunsogo, Ogun State, Omotosho in Ondo State and Egbin in Lagos State.
She said the inability of these power plants to function at optimal capacity was responsible for the outages experienced in parts of Lagos and Ogun States.
‘‘You know this gas pipeline is a major line and a critical national asset. It has to be shut down for repair works to be effected. The engineers are working assiduously to ensure that the pipelines are fixed. As soon as work is completed, power supply will be restored to the affected states.’’
On its part, the management of Ikeja Electric in a notice to consumers within its network, explained that the current supply interruption is as a result of low allocation from TCN, adding that TCN is currently working to ensure power supply is restored to the affected vicinity.
In the same vein, Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC) on Friday apologised to its consumers over the current poor power supply in its area of operations.
Mr Godwin Idemudia, General Manager, Corporate Communications Unit of EKEDC, said in a statement in Lagos that it was due to a fault at the Egbin-Benin 330KV transmission line.
According to Idemudia, the fault has led to mitigated power supply from the Egbin power plant in Egbin in Ikorodu area of Lagos to EKEDC area of operations.
The General Manager said that power supply would be restored when the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) rectified the fault. He thanked the consumers for their understanding and promised that they would be updated on the situation.