Questions over power stability as country is plunged into darkness

Energy Cabinet Secretary Opiyo Wandayi at a past event. [File, Standard]

Kenya once again experienced a crippling electricity outage, causing untold losses to individual power users, business and critical institutions including health facilities, putting the lives of Kenyans at risk. 

The outage took power sector agencies more than six hours to restore supply to all the affected regions.  The authorities are yet to explain to Kenyans the cause of the blackout and measures put in place to ensure it does not recur.

It is the second major outage in recent months following last August’s countrywide blackout. It adds to the series of power outages that the country has experienced in recent years.

The numerous outages have seen the country sliding in the global index that ranks countries depending on the number of widespread outages and how fast electricity supply is restored. 

Kenya Power on Wednesday at 1.28am said the country was experiencing a widespread outage “affecting most of the country, except parts of Western and North Rift regions”.

“The cause of this outage is yet to be determined,” said the power firm. 

It later issued a statement noting that it had restored electricity supply to most of the affected regions by 4.55am. It was only at 7.35am that the firm said that it had been able to restore electricity supply to all affected areas.

Major power outages are now becoming a cause of concern.  Aside from the outages experienced yesterday and last August, the country experienced similar blackouts last year, with one on November 11 that was caused by breakdown of power plants at Olkaria and took more than four hours to restore. 

Perhaps one of the worst in recent years was experienced in August 2023 and took more than 20 hours before supply was fully restored. Earlier in January 2022, collapse of transmission towers near Suswa brought down the Loiyangalani-Suswa resulting in a countrywide outage. 

Around the same time, there was also damage on the Kiambere-Dandora line that meant power from the seven forks hydro dams could not be distributed, resulting in prolonged outages.

The two instances saw police probe some energy sector officials for possible sabotage but this was later dismissed as a case of vandalism.

In its annual report for the year to June 2024, Kenya Power said different factors, including constraints on global supply chains that affected access to key materials, hampered preventive maintenance on the distribution network. 

It disclosed that frequent outages saw Kenya’s drop in indices used to track how reliable a country’s electricity grid is. 

“Extreme weather conditions also caused flooding of substations and infrastructure damage, leading to widespread power interruptions,” said Kenya Power. 

“These factors negatively affected electricity reliability indices, with the Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI) increasing to 2.26 hours from 2.24 the previous year, and the System Average Interruption Frequency Index (Saifi) declining to 47.5 from 44.9.”

Kenya’s Saifi score had further dropped in 2023 from 38.18 in 2022. The higher the score, the more unreliable a country’s power supply is. In 2021, Kenya’s Saifi index stood at 29.29, indicating a drastic fall in recent years.

The outages have been causing major losses for residential electricity consumers as well as businesses, both large and small. The prolonged blackout was also a major challenge for critical institutions such as hospitals, many of them unable to run backup generators for the duration of the blackout, with some, especially public hospitals having scant resources including the backup generators or adequate fuel.

The rising number of outages saw National Assembly’s Departmental Committee on Energy recommend penalties on Kenya Power whenever there are prolonged blackouts.

In a report that was presented to Parliament two weeks ago, the Committee recommended that “Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) ensures that there is strict adherence to the international benchmarks of supply such as the CAIDI, SAIFI and System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) as set out in the Tariff Control Period to improve quality of supply to the customer, of which penalties should accrue to the utility company (Kenya Power) in the event of non-compliance”.

Epra has in the past drafted regulations that would require power utilities to compensate users for losses or damage suffered due to failure, poor quality or irregularity in the supply of electricity. The draft regulations however required the electricity grid to be upgraded to the extent that it is reliable and provide quality power as per Epra prescriptions, which is yet to be attained.

Ministry of Energy officials have attributed the blackouts to years of underinvestment in transmission as a key reason for recent breakdowns. 

The government admits it hasn’t allocated enough funds to maintain or expand transmission infrastructure and is unlikely to do so due to budget constraints.

Ketraco estimates Sh620 billion ($4.8 billion) is needed for new power lines over the next two decades, with only Sh127.14 billion ($978 million) committed, mostly from development partners, leaving a Sh492.7 billion ($3.79 billion) gap.

The government hopes to bridge this through public-private partnerships (PPPs), with international firms already showing interest. 

Ketraco’s Transmission Master Plan 2023-2042 outlines the need for 6,500 km of new high-voltage lines.

It is against this investment gap that the government has recently been pushing for private sector participation in construction on power transmission lines, an argument used to make a case for onboarding Adani Power in the local electricity sector. 

Adani Energy Solutions planned to build three transmission lines totaling 371 km and three substations, with the project cost estimated at $907 million (Sh117.91 billion). 

President William Ruto however directed the Energy ministry to cancel the deal following public uproar as well as the Adani’s bribery indictment by the United States.