MPs demand answers over national power outages
Parliament in session during the State of the Nation address on November 9.
A parliamentary committee has written to the two Principal Secretaries in the Ministry of Energy demanding an explanation on the cause of Sunday night's national power blackout.
The National Assembly Committee on Energy has separately written to Energy Principal Secretary Alex Wachira and his petroleum counterpart Mohamed Liban to give a preliminary report on Tuesday on the cause of the outage that plunged the entire country into darkness.
The committee said the preliminary report will act as a basis for their discussion when the ministry will present a comprehensive report on December 18 on the causes of frequent power outages in the outcry.
“In the light of the importance and the urgency of this matter, and while awaiting deliberations during the aforementioned meeting, the committee requests that a preliminary report be submitted on the same by Wednesday, December 13,” reads the letter from parliament dated December 11.
In the letter, the committee wants the ministry to provide the status of investigations into the roles of various actors in the power generation, transmission and distribution chain in averting outages, and the possibility of any acts of commission or omission on their part that may have caused the outage.
The lawmakers also want assurance from both the Ministry of Energy and Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) that it has put concrete plans in place to address the matter.
Appearing before the committee in September following another national blackout that occurred on August 25, Energy CS Davis Chirchir told MPs that after an investigation by the team of engineers, it was established that the outage was caused by tripping of the dynamic reactive power compensation at Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) substation
The voltage dip occurred simultaneously with a transient fault on 66KV EPZ and Savannah feeders emanating from 220/66KV Athi River substation
The voltage dip was recorded at Nairobi North Suswa, Embakasi, and Loiyangalani substations among others
“There being no other notable occurrence recorded on the system, it has been concluded that the two events, trip of the LTWP plant and the system voltage dips, triggered the national power outage,” Mr Chirchir told MPs.
The recent blackout, which was the sixth in three years has been attributed to the temporary loss of the line that led to the sudden increase in electricity flow on the Juja-Lessos-Muhoroni link, subsequently overloading transformers at Olkaria 2 and Dandora-Juja line
On Monday, Mr Chirchir said Kenya Power will start rationing electricity in a bid to ease pressure on the aging electricity line that has struggled to accommodate the increased demand of power.
