The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has introduced an internally developed load & outage analytics platform to address systemic operational inefficiencies, streamline grid monitoring, and curb mounting technical and commercial losses across its national network.
Developed by TCN’s Operations Department just a year after the creation of the Transmission Service Operator (TSO) division, the Streamlit-based software unifies data across 13 modules.
Speaking at the technical presentation of the platform in Abuja, Sule Abdulaziz, the Managing Director of TCN, said that noted that while full system deployment remains pending, the platform immediately enhances network visibility.
He emphasized that minimizing system losses through precise load management and supply-demand matching remains vital to lowering operational costs and stabilizing the grid.
The platform replaces legacy manual reporting systems, which was historically plagued by fragmented spreadsheets, multi-day compilation delays, inconsistent KPIs, and a lack of audit trails—with automated, board-ready reporting generated in minutes.
Abdulaziz who was represented by Aminu Tahir, General Manager, Project Coordination, at TCN, said, “Technical and commercial losses remain a major concern affecting TCN’s performance, this underscore the need for improved understanding and analysis of the transmission system, particularly in the areas of load management and supply-demand matching.
“Better load management and improved grid stability would help reduce outages, enhance operational efficiency, and lower the costs associated with prolonged interruptions,” Abdilaziz said. He added that effective control and maintenance of the system will contribute significantly to reducing losses and strengthening the overall performance and stability of Nigeria’s transmission network.
During his presentation, Godwin Aguiyi, General Manager, Operations, explained that TCN’s current reliability reporting is plagued by fragmented data scattered across spreadsheets in different regions, slow manual reporting processes that take days to compile, inconsistent calculation of key performance indicators, and the absence of a proper audit trail.
These inefficiencies, he said, delays management decisions and weaken national reliability assessments.
“The system provides region, station, transformer, and feeder views for load analysis, automatically classifies outages and generates reliability KPI reports, and produces board-ready reports in minutes rather than days. It also incorporates governance features such as role-based access, structured uploads, and full audit trails to ensure accountability.
“In the month of July alone, 3,714 outages were logged nationwide, resulting in 48,603 MWh of load lost. Lagos region accounted for 20,693 MWh of that total, with 572 emergency outages, 306 forced outages, and 129 planned outages.” He further revealed that 22 feeders exceeded allowable outage hours, with losses valued at N720.33 million.
“The OBOSI feeder in Onitsha lost 1,063.74 MWh at Band A rates, underscoring the scale of inefficiencies the platform is designed to address,” he added.
He said that the system also integrates the Fault Attribution Ratio (FAR), a regulatory framework that determines responsibility for service interruptions between TCN and the Distribution Companies.
“Under the Service Level Agreement, TCN’s allowable downtime responsibility is set at 30 percent, while DisCos account for 70 percent — an allocation basis for permitted downtime rather than a fixed split applied to every individual outage, as each event is separately attributed according to its identified fault type and responsible network segment.
“If fully deployed alongside the necessary interface energy measurement devices, the system would also support the monitoring of Transmission Losses Factor (TLF) across the network,” he said.
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