Electrical Power outage in Nigeria: History, causes and possible solutions

Abstract

Power outages have assumed a very high embarrassing dimension in Nigeria. There are several areas of national life that power outage should never rear its ugly head but alas in Nigeria power outage for several days is common and could happen just anywhere – In 2009, the presidential palace was not spared and power outage became so frequent that ever since, the state house is powered 24 hours with generators. The last Junior World cup played in Nigeria really brought out some embarrassing moments when the whole pitch was thrown in darkness. The Muritala Mohammed Airport is not spared despite being the main gateway in the south into and out of this country. In the midst of this however, Nigeria's demand for energy and electricity is increasing rapidly and Nigeria has a 20 - 2020 vision (i.e. to become one of the twenty industrialized countries by year 2020). This paper covers 120 substations in Ondo State of Nigeria that can be described as fairly industrialised and well populated. The information available from these stations helps to describe a general situation facing the country as a whole. This article presents some solutions to these embarrassing moments. It is a paper designed to highlight some steps that can help achieve stable power supply in Nigeria.

Keywords Energy utilization; Power outages; substations, energy management and Nigeria.