Bill seeks to mandate outage plans to prevent Kenya’s costly blackouts

Kenya’s energy sector is set to clamp down on uncoordinated electricity plant shutdowns as regulators propose penalties for generators who fail to submit comprehensive annual maintenance schedules.

The measure aims to keep the lights on for homes and businesses while safeguarding the national grid from avoidable disruptions.

The Draft Energy (Electricity Reliability, Quality of Supply and Service) Regulations, 2025, require all power producers to submit a detailed 52-week outage plan for each of their plants.

These plans, to be filed with the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) and Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco), must be presented by December 31 each year or within four months after the end of a producer’s financial year.

The regulator says filing these schedules in advance will allow maintenance to be prioritised based on urgency and prevent multiple plants from going offline simultaneously.

Such coordination is considered essential, given the steady rise in electricity consumption and the growing number of households and businesses now connected to the grid.

“A generation licensee who fails to submit to the System Operator a 52-weeks-ahead outage plan per generating plant showing planned outages schedule by December 31st of each year commits an offence and is liable to a fine of Sh100,000 per month for each of the months that the breach continues,” the regulations specify.

Previously, power producers submitted outage information informally under verbal agreements with Epra and Kenya Power.

Formalising this requirement in law is expected to strengthen electricity supply management and reduce the risk of sudden interruptions, particularly as Kenya Power serves over 10 million customers and electricity consumption has reached 13.68 billion kilowatt-hours, nearly double the levels a decade ago.

Frequent blackouts in the past have been linked to faults, animal interference, and ageing transmission infrastructure. In 2023, a single broken jumper at two Olkaria geothermal units caused nationwide outages.

Regulators note that enforcing legally binding outage schedules is key to preventing similar events in the future.

Kenya is following international examples where annual outage plans are mandatory. France and Ghana, for instance, legally require generators to submit such schedules to maintain system stability.

Currently, at least 25 power plants supply the national grid, operated by both government-owned and independent companies.

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