Kenya experiences blackout for second day

Aerial view of Nairobi in total blackout for the second day on August 26, 2023, several businesses affected by national power blackout. [Edward Kiplimo, Standard]

The country was plunged into darkness for the second day running on Saturday evening after power loss affected most parts of the country.

In its update Kenya Power (KP) said that the blackout that hit the country on Friday night spilling over to Saturday was as a result of losing the 270MW generation from Lake Turkana Wind Power.

The power man says that the loss triggered a power system imbalance and tripped other main generation units and stations which led to a total outage on the main grid.

"While there are situations where a plant could trip, our technical teams are analyzing the data from the protection relays to establish the root cause of the trip which caused a cascade failure of the system," they said.

KP says that they resorted to using power supply from the Seven Folk Hydro Power stations for restoration but the process takes longer compared to importing power from Uganda.

"We are jointly working on having the Uganda interconnector restored so as to enhance our grid recovery efforts."

Energy CS Davis Chirchir who visited Juja National control power substation on Saturday afternoon said that Uganda was also experiencing power challenges.

"This is a new challenge which we had never experienced before, and all the engineers had to be alerted to go back to the power stations to save the situation," he said.

KP said that it was also working to onboard power OlKaria which is home to most geothermal plants.

The Friday night power loss also affected the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) which led to the firing of Kenya Airports Authority Managing Director Alex Gitari by Transport CS Kipchumba Mukormen.

Henry Ogoye was appointed as his replacement in an acting capacity, he was KAA's Head of Corporate Planning.

Power at the airport was later restored.