Newly appointed Energy Cabinet Secretary Opiyo Wandai has come under increased scrutiny after Kenya suffered two nationwide blackouts in under two weeks.
Opiyo who was appointed under the broadbased government that saw President Ruto share power with opposition leader Raila Odinga, is finding himself on the receiving end of public anger.
After today’s power outage, Wandayi came out quickly to explain the cause of the blackout that affected several parts of the country, with the exception of the North Rift and Western regions.
The blackout came just a week after the last major outage, and barely a day after CS Wandayi had sternly expressed his ministry’s commitment to significantly reduce the incidents and rolled out strategies to tackle challenges facing the sector.
The CS, in a statement to newsrooms, disclosed that the blackout was caused by a trip in the Loiyangalani transmission line as well as a similar one on the Ethiopia – Kenya interconnector, which affected the grid.
“Today, Friday 6th September 2024 at 8.56 am, the 220kV High Voltage Loiyangalani transmission line tripped at Suswa substation while evacuating 288MW from Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) plant,” noted Wandayi.
“This was followed by a trip on the Ethiopia – Kenya 500kV DC interconnector that was then carrying 200MW, resulting to a total loss of 488MW. The total demand in the system at the time was 1790 MW. The loss of 488MW, accounting for 27.3% of the total generation, resulted in cascade failure and partial collapse of the grid.”
The Energy boss went ahead to explain that the Western region was, however, not affected by the morning outage due to supply through the interconnector to Tororo, Uganda.
He stated that the government began restoration efforts immediately the outage was witnessed, and within two hours power had been restored in most major cities and towns across Nairobi, Central Rift, Mt. Kenya, North Rift regions.
These included; Nyeri, Embu, Kirinyaga, Nanyuki, Nakuru, Naivasha, Thika, Eldoret, Kericho, Kakamega, Siaya, Busia, Vihiga, Kisumu, Bungoma and Webuye.
“As at now about 70% of the country has been restored and we are fast-tracking the restoration process for the rest of the county and we will be taking more loads as generation picks and we expect normalcy by late this afternoon,” said the CS.
