Kenya will still face national blackouts, warns CS Davis Chirchir

Kenya will still face national blackouts, warns CS Davis Chirchir

Energy Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir has warned of another nationwide blackout unless significant investment is directed toward strengthening power supply across the country.

Energy Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir has warned of another nationwide blackout unless significant investment is directed toward strengthening power supply across the country.

Chirchir highlighted that power supply lines are overloaded, contributing to the transmission challenges faced by Kenyan households. He revealed that a transmission constraint at the Kisumu-Muhoroni power line caused the recent nationwide power outage on Sunday.

Chirchir acknowledged the government's efforts to address power supply challenges, proposing mitigations such as building an alternative line to support Western Kenya's power supply and implementing battery energy storage systems for voltage stability.

Plans for Private-Public Partnerships and network maintenance are also underway to improve the resilience of the power infrastructure. The recent nationwide power outage on Sunday was the third occurrence, following incidents on August 25 and November 11. During the outage on November 11, it took over 12 hours to restore power in most parts of the country.

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