Shackleton’s Hut is a historic site, more precisely a small hut built at Cape Royds on Ross Island, facing on McMurdo Sound in Antarctica.

Ernest Shackleton has actually built the hut so that it would be used as a base for an earlier unsuccessful attempt to reach the South Pole, during the Nimrod Expedition between 1907 and 1909.

Even though Ernest Shackleton had experience, taking part in Robert Scott’s earlier Discovery Expedition, he planned to stay in Scott’s Hut on Hut Point, nonetheless, after being specifically asked not to do so, Shackleton’s crew erected their own pre-fabricated hut at Cape Royds.

Even though it is simple, just 10 meters (33 feet) long and 6 meters (19 feet) wide, it has a great importance in the polar exploration where at the beginning, an early side trip almost could have killed six members of the expedition on the first ascent of Mount Erebus which left them trapped on the side of the volcano in blizzard conditions.

Later, the first attempt on the pole broke down in personality conflicts and equipment failures and was forced to turn back within 161 kilometers (100 miles) of the goal.

Inadequate food supplies and the death of the expedition’s ponies on the return trip led Shackleton to complain.

Still, the expedition had success and it is until today one of the most important and well known ones.

As the time started “eating” slowly the hut, in 2004, after two years of planning, the Cape Royds Hut was restored between 2004 and 2008 as part of the Ross Sea Heritage Restoration Project, which is looking after the four Antarctic expedition huts.

The building has been left almost exactly as it was at the turn of the last century, where workers found two crates of whiskey and brandy intact and full.

At the moment one of the crates is located in the Canterbury Museum in Crustchurch, New Zealand with hope to do some analysis to the whiskey.

As it is one of the most fascinating sites in Antarctica, visitors to the hut will find the hut door opening out to the world’s most southern Adelie penguin population along with a panoramic view that includes the Transantarctic Mountains, Mount Erebus, the Barne Glacier and McMurdo Sound.

On the ground lie in original positions the remnants of the expedition’s provisions and equipment including boxes of maize, dog kennels, a wheel from the Arrol-Johnston car and pony feed boxes.

Inside, the Hut has shelves stacked with Edwardian provisions that include tinned meats and vegetables and bottles of raspberries, gooseberries and red currants still wrapped in straw.

Also, the jackets of Shackleton and his men are still hanging on hooks which is making the visitors to feel more the presence of Ernest Shackleton and his men, making it definitely one of the most alluring places on the continent.

Nigeria’s daily power generation has fallen by an alarming 630 megawatts (MW) since Wednesday following a fire outbreak at Egbin Power Plant in Ikorodu, Lagos State and the resultant shut down of generation by the company.

This development, coupled with the load reduction mechanism adopted by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) to prevent system collapse, has worsened the power supply situation in Lagos State.

Electricity consumers in the state and its environs have been witnessing constant power outages for several weeks.

Egbin Power had, in a statement issued to its stakeholders and the general public yesterday, reported the fire incident at its power plant on Wednesday, February 2, 2022, at about 4.20pm, leading to blackout in Lagos State.

The thermal plant has an installed capacity of 1,320MW consisting of six turbines of 220MW each, while its actual average generating capacity is about 800MW.

Egbin said the fire outbreak was successfully contained by a team of its firefighters in collaboration with firefighters from the Nigeria Gas Company (NGC) in Egbin.

The company said it had set out a process to determine the cause of the fire incident as it had temporarily suspended its operations in line with the plant’s safety procedures.

“Egbin has since activated its emergency response mechanism to determine the cause of the incident, while operations at the plant have been temporarily suspended in line with the plant’s safety procedures.

Egbin is also working with the Federal Fire Service, the Federal Ministry of Power and other stakeholders to review the incident,” the management of the power plant said in the statement.

Confirming the fire incident and its technical implications, TCN’s spokesperson, Mrs. Ndidi Mba, said that it had led to the removal of a total of 630MW from the national grid.

Mba said, “We know that there was a fire outbreak and the total generation of 630MW was removed from the grid because of that.

“You know, when a fire outbreak happens, even if it doesn’t affect the entire units, the tendency is that, to protect the other ones, you shut them down.”

“So, as I said, 630mw was removed from the grid on that day (Wednesday).”

Nigeria generates an average of 8,000mw of electricity daily, out of the installed 13,800mw capacity, transmits an average of 5,000mw, while distribution hovers between 3,000 and 2,500mw.

Meanwhile, electricity consumers in Lagos and its environs have recently been witnessing constant power outages.

The two distribution companies serving Lagos – Ikeja Electric (IE) and Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC) -attributed the outages under their networks to a drop in power generation in the country.

In a recent statement for its customers, IE blamed the power outage experienced in certain parts of its network on load shedding by the TCN as a result of a drop in power generation.

EKEDC had also attributed the reduction in supply to the drop in power generation from an average of 3,700MW to 2,000MW.

The Disco said this was caused by gas limitations arising from vandalism and more recently an issue affecting the TCN line from the Egbin Power Plant.

Explaining the constant power outages in Lagos State in recent times, the TCN spokesperson stated that the state was a high consumption area and that the agency had to reduce the load to avoid overloading 330kv lines within the state and to achieve load balance.

Meanwhile, Egbin has assured the public that its technical team is working assiduously to restore operations.

“As the foremost power plant in the nation, Egbin remains committed to providing power innovatively and responsibly in compliance with good health, safety and environmental standards,” she added.