Economic Implication of Unreliable Power System in Nigeria: A Case Study of Ota 132/33 Kv Transmission Station

Abstract

The impact of Power system reliability on the economy of a nation cannot be underestimated or overemphasized. The quality of power supply to customers is measured of how reliable the available power supply is used with respect to time. Hence, an analysis of the economy based on the supply of electricity is very important to provide the quantitative results and comprehensive information about how the energy use affects economic growth and development of Ota. The power system in Ota experiences high downtime due to the fact that the substation does not have the capacity to accommodate the rapid population growth and industrial development in the area. The increasing downtime leads to blackout in most part of the city resulting in serious economic damage and industrial problems. This paper presents the economic impact of unreliable power system in Nigeria. Ota 132 kV substation was selected for the study. The performance and operations problems of the substation were investigated which include frequent power outages, assumed to be caused by environmental factors such as moisture, temperature or heat, ageing, mechanical fracture, and operational faults, which result in outage of power to the designated feeder. These abnormal conditions trigger relays in the areas of overload, overvoltage, overheating, unbalanced loading and fire hazards. All these faults are reported daily as they occur. Provision of reliable power supply is, therefore, a problem in the current substation-load scheme. The study was undertaken to show the level of unreliability of supply in Nigeria, Ota Township a case study. The load loss in MW, failure rate, downtime and revenue loss of the feeders were computed analytically and graphically represented. The result from the study revealed that the downtime, after every fault resulted in heavy load loss and in turn causes a huge revenue loss.