Many parts of the country were plunged into darkness on Wednesday morning in what Kenya Power said was “due to a system disturbance”.
In a statement, Kenya Power apologised for the 11:09am blackout that affected parts of Nairobi, Coast and Mt. Kenya regions and said they were trying to resolve the issue.
“At 11:09 am this morning, we lost power supply due to a system disturbance, affecting parts of Nairobi, Coast and Mt Kenya regions,” read the statement.
“We are working in collaboration with other sector players to restore the power supply as soon as possible. An update on the restoration progress will be issued in due course,” read part of the statement.
The company apologised to customers for the inconvenience caused.
Kenyans, especially those working from home, expressed their frustrations, urging the company to fix the problem urgently.
The outage comes amidst complaints from Kenyans over the increased cost of buying electricity, as most of them say they pay more for less.
In January 2022, the company confirmed a power outage in several parts of the country is due to a glitch.
Kenya Power said the outage on its grid happened after towers supporting a high-voltage power line linking Nairobi to the Kiambere hydroelectric dam collapsed. The monopoly did not publicly disclose what caused the fall of the towers, but insiders said earlier indications pointed to possible vandalism of the installation based at Nairobi’s Imara Daima area.
“It appears this is a case of vandalism, but this is not yet conclusive. The line is near a slum dwelling,” the Kenya Power official said. “Yes, it is an old-line, but it has been very stable at least for the longest time I have been here.”
The outage which was reported around 10.45 am took nearly four hours before being restored to parts of the country after repair works by the Kenya Power engineers.
This is the fourth major countrywide blackout in recent years.
More than seven million customers were hit by a major early morning outage on May 9, 2020, following a fault on a section of a high-voltage line transmitting electricity to Nairobi from the Olkaria geothermal power plants near Naivasha.
The fault in May 2020, which also affected Uganda since the grids in the two countries are inter-connected, resulted in “power loss on the critical power line thus overloading the other power generators countrywide”.
A similar outage was reported on January 9, 2018, due to a “technical hitch” and also disrupted supply in Uganda.
