Kenya Power Managing Director Joseph Siror when he appeared before the Senate Energy Committee at Parliament Buildings Nairobi on October 17, 2023. PHOTO | DENNIS ONSONGO | NMG
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Olkaria hitch plunges Kenya into fifth blackout in 3 years
A transmission hitch at two of Kenya’s major generation stations has been blamed for plunging the country into its fifth nationwide blackout in under three years, raising concerns about the reliability of the country’s national grid in the wake of El Nino.
Kenya Power managing director Joseph Siror told the Business Daily on Sunday that the interruption at Olkaria was the main reason for the latest nationwide outage that happened Saturday and lasted well into the wee hours of Sunday morning.
“Loss of a transmission line that interlinks two major generation stations at Olkaria and which also evacuates power to the national grid caused the blackout,” Mr Siror said in a text message.
Kenya Power said the broken jumper had since been replaced. It is not clear if the jumper that broke was as a result of ageing or a poor maintenance problem.
This was the fifth outage and it comes barely three months after Kenya was plunged into another one that lasted more than 20 hours. The outage on August 26 was the longest in recent years.
Kenya Power’s at least 9.2 million consumers have faced three similar prolonged outages since last year, costing the economy billions of shillings in lost business and interruptions.
Similar blackouts were also experienced in January and November last year amid growing frustration in businesses and homes.
Kenya Power took hours to start restoring supply, with several parts getting electricity some minutes to midnight notably Nairobi, Central Rift and South Nyanza.
“We have lost power supply to parts of the country. An update upon restoration progress and cause of the power outage will be issued later,” the power distributor had said in a statement to media houses hours into the blackout.
The Coast region was among the last to have power supply restored to normalcy well past midnight, according to the last update that Kenya Power issued at 11:58 p.m. on Saturday.
The frequency of the outages and the long time that Kenya Power takes to restore supplies is further expected to fuel the shift by businesses and wealthy and middle-class homes to alternatives, notably biomass and solar.
Power blackouts in Kenya have in recent years turned into a frequent occurrence amid an ageing distribution system, claims of sabotage and hitches at grid interconnection points.
Following the countrywide blackout in the second week of January last year, some senior staff at Kenya Power were arrested amid allegations that the high-voltage power lines in Embakasi had been vandalised.
The officials, including an engineer and managers in the transmission network department, were later freed for lack of evidence. But the investigations went cold and the outcome remains unknown.
Kenya Power’s distribution line is also ageing and continues to expose consumers to outages at the minimum of disruptions.
Extended blackouts force businesses to use generators or close operations for those without backups, especially small businesses like salons and barbershops.
Hospitals are some of the most vulnerable in case of blackouts, especially for those with patients under critical care and life-saving machines.
The growing number of power blackouts comes amid a push to have Kenya Power compensate businesses over losses attributed to the outages.
Currently, Kenya Power compensates for injuries and damaged kits but does not pay for financial losses suffered as a result of being cut off electricity supply.
There are, however, draft proposals from the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) that seek to compel electricity distributors like Kenya Power to compensate consumers for financial losses, equipment damage and death caused by power blackouts.
The draft regulations that were published last year are yet to move closer to legal adoption, leaving consumers to grapple with unreliability, financial losses and other adverse impact of Kenya Power blackouts.
In 2015, the government rejected a Bill by the now Mombasa Governor, Abdulswamad Nassir that sought to have Kenya Power compensate businesses whose power supply is cut off for more than three hours in a day.
