Kenyans have yet again felt the pain of over reliance on thermal power generation after the country was thrown into darkness after generators temporarily went dead.

Besides paying high electricity bills due to relying on emergency power, major towns were on Sunday plunged into four hours of darkness following a technical fault, which switched off generators.

The Kenya Power and Lighting Company had to import about 30MW from Uganda to resume normal supply. Uganda is also experiencing a biting power shortage.

"The blackout was triggered by use of emergency power because the system in not resilient to disturbances. It automatically switches off to avoid damage," said KPLC managing director Joseph Njoroge.

According to Mr Njoroge, a temporary fault occurred on one of the transmission lines between the Kamburu Power Station and the Dandora sub-station, where the company has a control centre.

Since the power generation, transmission and distribution systems are interconnected, the fault prompted the emergency power generators at Embakasi, Nairobi South and Gitaru to automatically switch off to avoid damage.

Swift reaction

The switching off created a ripple effect as other generators in other parts of the country could not cope with the sudden high demand, a situation that forced the whole generation system to switch off.

Although the swift reaction of KPLC engineers saw normal supply restored within four hours, the blackout left a trail of losses as businesses were forced to close down. Security was also compromised.

The blackout brought back memories of May 25 last year when the country was plunged into five hours of darkness.

The thermal generators are owned by Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen), Aggreko, Tsavo Power and Iberafrica.

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