Federal government says the collapse of the national grid was caused by a fire outbreak on the Kainji/Jebba 330 kilovolt (kV) line.

On Thursday, in a series of posts on X, Adebayo Adelabu, minister of power, said the fire led to about 356.63MW generation loss.

Yesterday, the national grid suffered a total system collapse — the first in more than a year.

Giving updates, Adebulu said the fire has been fully arrested “and over half of the connections are now up and the rest will be fully restored in no time”.

“At 00:35Hrs this morning, Fire outbreak with explosion sound was observed on Kainji/Jebba 330kV line 2 (Cct K2J) blue phase CVT & Blue phase line Isolator of Kainji/Jebba 330kV line1 was observed burning. This led to sharp drops in frequency from 50.29Hz to 49.67 Hz at 0:35:06Hrs with Jebba generation loss of 356.63MW,” he said.

“Kainji started dropping load from 451.45 MW at 00:35:07Hrs to zero.

“At 00:41Hrs frequency dropped further from 49.37 Hz to 48.41Hz then resulted in system collapse of the grid.

“We are on top of the situation and speedy restoration is in progress.”

Adelabu said the delay in providing an update was deliberate, so as not to cause panic and to also be able to give update on the progress of remedial actions taken so far. 

This, he said, is to ensure economic and security saboteurs do not take advantage of every reported situation.

The Cable