Kenya blackout: Senior energy officials to face national assembly

In the wake of the blackout that hit Kenya over the weekend, affecting most parts of the country, including Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), two senior energy officials have been summoned to appear before the national assembly.

Kenya Power said in a press statement over the weekend that at 9:45pm on Friday, “we experienced a system disturbance leading to loss of bulk power supply to various parts of the country.”

It followed up with an update stating that they had “successfully restored power to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and other critical areas within the Nairobi metropolitan.

“Our teams are working to restore electricity to all areas across the country that were affected by the outage.”

In its last update, on Saturday, 27 August (in a Facebook post at 3:33pm) Kenya Power explained that the outage occurred after losing 270MW generation from the Lake Turkana Wind Power Plant.

“The loss triggered an imbalance in the power system and tripped all other main generation units and stations, leading to a total outage of the grid.

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“The system demand at the time was 1,855.8MW and therefore a loss of approximately 15% of generation was expected to cause a widespread power outage.”

It further said that by 11:45am on Saturday “most of the transmission grid had been energised and normal power supply to customers restored as generation came on board.”

Kenya Power said it was jointly working on having the Uganda interconnector restored so as to enhance grid recovery efforts. It was also in the final stages of onboarding power from the Olkaria complex.

The outage at the airport which left passengers stranded for hours, saw the head of Kenya Airports Authority Alex Gitari fired by Transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen. Another senior official at the airport had also been relieved of his duties and reportedly demoted.

Murkomen apologised on social media for the blackout at the airport.

“I am really sorry for what has happened at JKIA with the blackout. There is no excuse worth reporting and there is no reason why our airport is in darkness.

“Once again I am sorry. I assure the country that we shall work tirelessly to deliver on our mandate. I believe KAA has some of the most qualified staff whose potential has been inhibited. We shall work hard to rectify the situation.

“I thank Mr. Alex Gitari our former CEO and Fred Odawo former GM Project and Engineering Services for their long service to KAA and the nation.

“I congratulate Mr. Henry Ogoye and Project and Engineering Services Eng. Samuel Mwochache on their appointments and look forward to working with them and the entire team to take the organisation to the next level.”

“Today in consultation with the Board we made changes In the management of the Kenya Airports Authority.”

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The state-run Kenya Broadcasting Corporation reported on Sunday that the National Assembly Committee on Energy has summoned Energy Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir and Kenya Power CEO Joseph Siror to appear before it next Thursday to address the power outage.

The Energy Committee, chaired by MP Vincent Musyoka, wants the pair to issue a comprehensive account of the factors that led to the outage, which affected various areas including the airport.

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