Power outage plunges Kenya into darkness

Most parts of the country were thrown into darkness on Sunday evening following a power blackout. The outage, which happened at around 6.30pm, hit Nairobi Mombasa, Nakuru, Nyeri, Nyahururu, Kisumu, Nanyuki and Eldoret.

Those without generators had to make do with candles and lamps as we went to press on Sunday night and entertainment spots in Nairobi emptied quickly as revellers headed to the safety of their homes.

Kenya Power and Lighting Company MD Joseph Njoroge said the outage was caused by a technical fault at the Aggreko power station in Nairobi’s Embakasi area. The fault, he said, had led to an overload on the supply line causing the outage.

A company spokesman said their controllers were busy trying to restore power to the national grid. “The priority is to get power back in the national network and the controllers have not been able to tell me what the cause of the problem is,” KPLC communications manager Migwi Theuri told the Nation.

He said given the complex nature of the power transmission, it could take anything from a few minutes to several hours to restore it. KPLC buys power from Kenya Generation Company and independent power producers such as Tsavo Power, Aggreko and Iberafrica.

The bulk of Kenya’s power is generated from the hydroelectric stations on the Tana referred to as the Seven Forks Dams. The national grid is managed from the National Control Centre at Juja and Mr Theuri said he had not known whether the problem lay with the generation or transmission systems.

Control centre

The last such blackout was on May 25 last year and it took five hours to restore power, with the lack of a control system at KPLC blamed for the problem.

Energy minister Kiraitu Murungi was then summoned by the parliamentary committee on energy, where he said that the problem had been caused by the lack of a third transformer at Kamburu dam.

The minister said KPLC would require a staggering Sh3.8 billion to install an effective control system to avoid future blackouts and that amount was beyond the reach of the government.

Power blackouts affect key facilities such as hospitals and industries and those without emergency power generators bear the brunt of the outages as they are forced to stop work. It is understood that the blackout prompted a security alert

Wananchi (citizens) who called the Nation expressed fears that the security situation could worsen while others wondered whether Kenya was under attack from terrorists.

The blackout came in the wake of the end of the two-month power rationing caused by low levels of water in power dams. The onset of the short rains is expected to boost the level of water at the dams that generate the bulk of Kenya’s power.