Electricity consumers in Edo, Delta, Ondo and the entire South East may experience a blackout as a result of the fire outbreak that gutted facilities of the Benin City station of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN)‎ on Sunday.

The fire is said to have affected the 330KV transmission line reactor of the TCN along Sapele road in the Edo State capital.

The management of Benin and Enugu Electricity Distribution Companies (BEDC) and (EEDC), in separate statements, indicated hard times for electricity consumers.

The BEDC management in a statement tagged: “System Collapse,” notified its customers of power supply disruption within the area of operation due to the fire incident.

“The management of BEDC Electricity Plc. hereby appeals to customers in Edo State, parts of Delta and Ondo states over the present service disruption to these areas due to the fire incident which occurred at the Benin TCN station.

“Presently, all areas connected to the Benin TCN are affected due to a partial system collapse arising from the fire incident as this TCN sub-station is interconnected to other TCN locations across the country,” the statement said.

It noted that the specific locations affected by the fire are yet unknown but that major parts of Edo State are affected by the outage, even as the statement said every effort is being made by stakeholders to restore power.

“Every effort is being put in place by the stakeholders to restore the light as soon as the fire is contained.

“The specific locations affected by the fire are yet to be known but major parts of Edo State are affected by the outage. We appeal for customers’ understanding and cooperation over the situation.

Please bear with us,” the statement added.‎

The Enugu Electricity Distribution PLC (EEDC), also in a statement signed by its Head of Communications, Emeka Ezeh, also notified its customers within the entire South East of power disruptions which it blamed on the system collapse due to the fire outbreak on Benin 330KV transmission line reactor.

The statement which was obtained from the website of the distribution company indicated the disruption of power supply is consequent upon fire breakdown

“The Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) wishes to inform its esteemed customers that there will be loss of power. The present loss of supply in the entire South East, is as a result of a system collapse which occurred at 09:21 am of today (Sunday) June 30, 2019.

“This is as a result of a fire outbreak on Benin 330KV transmission line reactor.

“As a result of this unfortunate development, there is zero supply to all customers in our franchise areas as all our injection sub-stations are affected.

“We are standing by for restoration of supply by the TCN as they are already on the matter.

But reacting to the statement by the two distribution companies, the Principal Manager, Transmission of TCN, Benin, Mr. Chijioke, said the fire outbreak had nothing to do with disruption as what happened was insignificant to cause major electricity supply disruption.

Mr. Chijioke, an engineer with TCN, noted that “yes, there was a fire incident at the station Sunday, it wasn’t enough for the two discos to hinge their inability to supply electricity to their customers on the fire outbreak,” adding that the “company is working hard to restore normalcy.” (The Sun)

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