President William Ruto has directed the ministry of energy and petroleum under the leadership of Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir to end power outages in the country.
In a cabinet meeting held on Wednesday, Ruto said ‘frequent power failure hurts Kenya’s investment profile and the public’.
The meeting also resolved that the transmission line system should be unbundled to ensure that the whole country is not thrown into darkness if one line fails.
The cabinet also agreed that the Bomet-Narok line will be constructed to deal with the overloading of transmission lines that leads to outages. The line was funded in 2016 but has not been built following legal disputes.
The Bomet-Narok line will cost €400 million (Ksh.66 billion) and the funds will be from the African Development Bank.
Additionally, there will be a €1.2 billion (Kh200 billion) KenGen solar power project at the Seven Forks Dam to provide a safeguard against power failure. The government says the 42 megawatt project has a huge battery storage and when power fails, the stored energy kicks in.
The meeting also concluded that the solar power project would help conserve hydropower at the five dams that make up the Seven Forks.
Frequent power disruptions in the country
On Sunday, December 10, various parts of the country were left in the dark following a power blackout caused by overloading on the Kisumu-Muhoroni transmission line.
This caused an uproar from Kenyans and the political class. The country has experienced several blackouts this year alone that have led to massive losses for those in business and caused inconvenience for many Kenyans.
Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) was also affected again on Sunday with generators failing to kick in immediately. Transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen called for the police to investigate a case of sabotage at the airport
Addressing the press in Nairobi following the blackout, Energy and Petroleum Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir said the recent blackout was due to an overloaded transmission line, and that the government has various measures in place to help fix the problem.
The mitigation steps include load shedding in some parts of the country and constructing more transmission lines in partnership with the private sector to prevent tripping the electricity system and causing nationwide power outages.
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