The government has attributed the power outage reported across the country on Friday to an interruption on the 220 kilovolt (kV) Loiyangalani transmission line.

Energy Cabinet Secretary (CS) Opiyo Wandayi stated that the incident occurred at the Suswa substation, resulting in a power loss of 288 megawatts (MW) from the Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) plant.

Later, a trip on the Ethiopia-Kenya 500kV DC interconnector, carrying 200MW, pushed the total loss to 488MW.

Further, he revealed that the total demand in the system at the time was 1,790MW.

“The loss of 488MW, accounting for 27.3% of the total generation, resulted in cascade failure and partial collapse of the grid.”

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“This affected most regions of the country except parts of Western Kenya, which was supported by supply through the interconnector to Tororo, Uganda.”

To address the persistent blackouts, the Ministry has announced measures to prevent such future incidences.

One of them is the construction of alternative evacuation lines, such as the Gilgil-Thika-Malaa-Konza 400kV to decongest Rongai-Keringet-Chemosit and the Kisumu-Muhoroni-Chemosit line.

“Implementation of base load (hydro, geothermal) generation projects to improve energy security and provide adequate spinning reserves. During the last peak demand of 2239 MW recorded on 21st August 2024, 6MW was loadshed from the grid while the reserve margin was only 9MW against system requirement of 310 MW.”