Kenya Power attributes countrywide power blackout to system failure at Juja substation

A group of protestors march to voice their dissatisfaction with constant blackouts. [PHOTO: STANDARD]

By Standard Digital Reporter

NAIROBI, KENYA: A blackout experienced in many parts of the country on Tuesday has been attributed to a system breakdown at Juja Road substation in Nairobi.

A statement from power supplier Kenya Power said the outage that began in the afternoon affected most parts of the country except Kisumu, Eldoret, Kitale and Nakuru adding that its engineers were working to restore normalcy “within the shortest time possible.” However by 8:00pm power had not been restored.

“Kenya Power Chief Engineer for System Control, Eng. Henry Odedeh, said the breakdown was caused by a broken high voltage (66 kV) conductor at the substation which led to system disturbance shutting bulk power supplies from Olkaria and Seven Forks dams.” Kenya Power explained in their statement.

Countrywide blackouts have in the recent past been recurring to the point of being discussed in the National Assembly.

In May 28, 2013 another blackout affected the whole country after what was said to be an outage at Ndenderu substation.

Kenya Power then said it imported power from Uganda to restart the power station and restore normalcy to its customers.