……Upgrade to cause outage in Zaria, Turunku & Jaaji Feeder
By Chibisi Ohakah, Abuja
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has disclosed that it will commence the final stage of the construction of its new Kaduna – Jos 330kV double circuit transmission line, with the erection of eight triple-circuit towers at the intersection point of the new double circuit and existing single circuit 330kV transmission lines.
This activity will cause power outage on the 132kV Zaria- Kaduna transmission line, 33kV Turunku, and part of the 33kV Jaji feeder, from 8am to 5pm daily for the eight days indicated, TCN spokesperson, Ndidi Mbah, said in Abuja yesterday.
TCN manages the electricity transmission network in Nigeria. It is one of the 18 companies that was unbundled from the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in April 2004 and is a product of a merger of the transmission and system operations parts of defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).
Mbah, who is the company’s general manager, public affairs, explained that the erection of eight triple-circuit towers at the intersection point of the new double circuit will to enable the stringing of the three 330kV lines, pointing out that it falls in line with efforts to further expand its transmission capacity.
“With this, the line will be upgraded from 500 megawatts (MW) energy wheeling capacity to 1,500MW, which is 200% capacity increase. Reconstruction work will be completed within eight days, from the 8th to 15th December 2021,” she said.
Regretting the inconvenience the outage may cause the residents and people doing business in the affected areas, Mbah said it would ensure a safe working environment for the execution of the reconstruction work.
“On completion, the new 330kV double circuit transmission lines will increase the total capacity of the Kaduna – Jos line from 500MW to 1500MW,” she said, stressing however that TCN has made arrangements to continue to supply bulk electricity to Jos Distribution load centers in Jos, through the Makurdi 330kV lines 1 and 2, to minimize the effect of the capacity upgrade and assure that the project will be completed on the 15th of December as scheduled.
According to her, the decision to reconstruct and upgrade the Kaduna -Jos SC transmission line was due to the fact that the line is overloaded and can no longer cope with the load profile in that axis.
The completion of the new 330kV Kaduna- Jos DC transmission lines will resolve the present and anticipated increase in load demand on the line route, Mbah said.
TCN’s use of multi-circuit towers in some locations will prevent the demolition of properties in heavily built-up areas and still achieve increased bulk transmission capacity along that line route.
“We will therefore dismantle and reconstruct eight (8) non existing single circuit towers into special triple-circuit towers. We regret any inconvenience the load shedding may cause electricity customers affected by the reconstruction works on the line and note that the increase in capacity to 1500MW will positively impact voltage stability on the axis. Bulk power transmission will be restored immediately after reconstruction work is complete,” TCN said
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