【SMM News Flash】 Nigeria Commissions 1 MW Solar Mini-Grid and Launches 16 MW Network

October 17, Bangladesh’s Barind Multipurpose Development Authority held a meeting at its Rajshahi headquarters to assess solar power for about 17,000 irrigation pumps. Domestic and overseas technology companies discussed implementation, maintenance costs and smart irrigation. The news was published on October 18. Proposals include exporting surplus electricity through net metering, mobile irrigation payments and centralized pump management. Headquarters would monitor operations, electricity use, recharges and financial transactions. The initiative remains under study; discussions also addressed reducing irrigation costs and ensuring farmers’ access to irrigation services.

October 18, DTEK implemented emergency outages in parts of Kyiv region under instructions from Ukraine’s national grid operator. Attacks on energy facilities overnight on October 17–18 had disrupted electricity in Kyiv city and the Kyiv, Odesa and Ternopil regions. Odesa regional military administration chief Oleh Kiper reported that morning that attacks had left 24,000 households without electricity. DTEK’s schedule listed outages lasting 1.5–7 hours across different neighborhoods. Kyiv’s Dniprovskyi district entered an emergency outage around 10:00 local time on October 18; supply remained interrupted when that day’s report was filed.

October 18, Tianfu substation completed its first annual overhaul after transformer No. 3 was energized and operated stably. Work began on January 31 and lasted nearly nine months, involving over 1,200 personnel from more than 10 organizations and over 400 tasks across more than 30 work areas. Work covered six line bays, 500 kV busbar primary equipment and transformers, alongside a sectionalized double-busbar upgrade. More than 20 defects were eliminated. Tianfu connects Ganzi, Furong and Bayue substations at the center of the Sichuan–Chongqing UHV network, transmitting western Sichuan’s clean electricity to Chengdu–Chongqing demand centers.