POWER OUTAGE: FAAN INAUGURATES IPP FOR LAGOS AIRPORT
By LOUIS IBA
The Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) says it would be inaugurate a private power project for the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos as part of measures to stem the crisis of power outage that constantly disrupts flight activities at the airport. Yakubu Dati, spokesperson for FAAN said work on the power project, which had commenced some years back, had been completed, and that the plant was at present undergoing a test-run.
'The power improvement project at the Murtala Muhammed Airport Lagos has been completed and is being test run,' Dati said noting that the test running was ' preparatory to the formal commissioning of the project.' Dati was reacting to a heavy rain storm that occurred in Lagos last Monday which disrupted power supply to the Murtala Muhammed Airport for about six minutes due to a power surge from the two main PHCN power supply sources to the airport.
The airport is connected to two main power sources from Ejigbo and Egbin power stations. The storm initially knocked off the power supply from Ejigbo which led to a three-minute outage at the airport before FAAN engineers switched over to the alternate power supply source from Egbin. That supply line was later affected by the storm, leading to another three minute power outage. FAAN engineers then switched over to the airport's standby generators, some panels of which were unfortunately soaked with water, due to the heavy flooding that resulted from the heavy rainfall.
This resulted in a blackout at the 'E' wing of the airport, including the avio bridges. It was for this reason that arriving passengers on an international flight were processed through an alternative route at the terminal and in the process, were exposed momentarily to the rain. All departing flights were also delayed for about 30 minutes, to enable engineers rectify the faults in the generators. Full power supply was later restored to the airport and all operations resumed in earnest. Dati later told journalists that 'there were no accidents or injuries to anybody at the airport as a result of the power outage.' Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN.