Power has been restored in 330kv Alagbon substation after fire incident, says TCN

By Constance Athekame

The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN)  says it has restored power supply to its Alagbon Transmission Substation after a fire incident.

The incident happened  about 4.32pm on   Wednesday affected one of its 60 Mega Volt Ampree (MVA) power transformers in the substation.

Mrs Ndidi Mbah,  General Manager Public Affairs of TCN, made this known in a statement in Abuja on Thursday.

According to her, the operator on duty heard a heavy bang from the switchyard and immediately moved to  investigate the sound and found fire under the cooling fans/fins of the transformer.

”Frantic efforts were made to put out the fire with the fire extinguisher in the substation, but oil, which started dripping from the transformer,  ignited the fire more.

”The engineer then switched off power supply in the substation on the 300MVA 330/132/33 Kilo Volt (KV) transformer and called the Federal Fire Service in Onikan and  Dolphin Estate.

”The fire was put out at 5.35pm  by the fire men, ”she said.

Mbah said that from initial assessment, the transformer could be salvaged/repaired adding that  presently, the situation was under control.

She said that normal supply to the station was restored at 7.21pm and  available transformers in the station have been restored.

”Eko Distribution  on the ground for the management of the affected three  33KV feeder, as we have redundancy in the station.

”All customers feeding from Alagbon  330/132/33KV  substation will have supply soon.

”The situation is under control, and TCN will do a comprehensive check of the affected transformer immediately to enable it properly assess the transformer for repair work.

”We are truly saddened by this incident, especially as the company had operated from the beginning of this year to- date without any system collapse or major incident such as this,”she said.

Mbah said that TCN had already mobilised engineers  to assess the transformer and carry out repair work immediately.

She said the company would  ascertain what  triggered  the incident with the view to forestall such incident in its substations.

(NAN)