Minister says power supply disruption to persist till June end

The massive disruptions in power supply being experienced in several states across the nation will persist until June end, the Federal Government has said.

In this vein, a high level technical investigative panel headed by F. M. A. Olapade, a retired director of electrical inspectorate in the Ministry of Power, has been set up to investigate these recent power outages, with a report of its findings expected in two weeks.

Chinedu Nebo, minister of power in a statement made available to BusinessDay on Monday, made these known, while blaming these losses in power supply on “total or partial system collapse,” with Bayelsa, Kebbi, Sokoto, and Zamfara states, among the states, impacted since May.

According to the minister, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) mobilised contractors to Bayelsa to work on restoring power. “A permanent restoration of the transmission is expected to be completed by the same contractor in about 40 days,” Nebo explains.

Meanwhile, “Utilising spare towers already available to the TCN”, the timeline for the full restoration of supply to the affected areas in Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara is pegged for the end of June 2013.

The disruption in Bayelsa State was reportedly caused by the collapse of a terminal tower following a severe tropical rain storm. Similarly, the recent loss of power to some parts of Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara states was also as a result of rainstorm leading to the collapse of three units of 330kV towers.

Nebo adds, “In a general sense, deterioration in service delivery also occurred on Friday, May 24, 2013 caused by a cascaded trip on the main 330kV transmission lines in the South West axis of the national grid. With the loss of significant amount of transmission capacity, a total system collapse eventually occurred. Unfortunately, this sad event also coincided with the ongoing repairs taking place at the Ughelli Power Plant hence the prolonged delay in restoring the system. The other recent system collapse occurred as a result of system disturbances that led to the tripping of the Egbin Power