Energy Cabinet Secretary Opiyo Wandayi has said that the government is looking at tapping private sector capital among other options to address the persistent power blackout that is now becoming a threat to businesses that heavily rely on power.
The country has faced major power blackouts over the recent past leaving entire nation in the dark with government officials blaming the problem on infrastructural failure of energy grid straining the power supply causing the national grid to suffer major collapse.In the last one week alone, the country has been hit by two major power blackouts that have seen industries brought to their knees and traders left counting losses.While dismissing the current blackout to power rationing, Energy CS Opiyo Wandayi said the challenges currently experienced emanate from outdated power infrastructure along the chain.“For us to complete the entire transmission master plan of the nation, we require $5.3 billion against $250 million that is currently available for implementation of the Narok-Bomet link for instance,” PS State Department of Energy Alex Wachira earlier in the year disclosed.
The country has faced major power blackouts over the recent past leaving entire nation in the dark with government officials blaming the problem on infrastructural failure of energy grid straining the power supply causing the national grid to suffer major collapse. In the last one week alone, the country has been hit by two major power blackouts that have seen industries brought to their knees and traders left counting losses.
While dismissing the current blackout to power rationing, Energy CS Opiyo Wandayi said the challenges currently experienced emanate from outdated power infrastructure along the chain.
“The country’s installed capacity is more than adequate to meet the demands and even if the demands were to increase, we shall be able to meet it,” CS Wandayi said.
“Once we do the improvements that we are making on the infrastructure, it will go a long way in addressing the power black outs. But more importantly because the technical hitches do happen and they are bound to happen what we are doing as a ministry is to ensure that if and when such blackouts happen, we respond as fast as possible,” he added.
Eight Months ago, Davis Chirchir, the then CS for Energy currently serving in the Roads docket warned the country to prepare for power rationing to address overloading challenges on the power line.
“We have continued to connect customers on the last mile, we have continued to build industry and we have not built network in the last 5-6 years causing constrain,” he noted.
“As part of the interventions as we look at you in the eye is load shedding, instead of overloading a line and causing the whole country to trip is to remove some feeders and therefore lessen the power demand that flows through a line.”
On August 25 2023, Kenya recorded the worst outage, causing a historical disruption on services. The cause remains a mystery, with the power company blaming a failure at Africa’s largest wind farm, which laid the responsibility on the power grid instead.
“We are going to work on quick fixes which will include putting a new transformer in areas such as Lesos, looking at how do we quickly have a solution between Muhoroni-Chemosit to deload that link and have a quick solution that goes from Muhoroni to Ndhiwa,” Chirchir the then CS Energy said.
Kenyan Gov on Quick Fixes as Power Blackouts Persist – Kenyan Wall Street – African Business and Global Finance
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