Kenya's hit by nationwide power outage

A major power blackout hit Kenya for several hours on Tuesday disrupting several businesses operating in the East African nation. A statement from the electricity distributor, Kenya Power said the outage which started at around 1:30 p.m. local time (1030 GMT) was caused when two transmission lines between the Olkaria geothermal load center in northwest and Ndenderu sub-station near Nairobi tripped, while they were carrying 400 MW of electricity. "Subsequently, the national interconnected grid and generating system also tripped, causing a national power outage," Kenya Power said in a statement issued in Nairobi. The electricity utility said its engineers immediately commenced a "blackstart" with electricity supplied from Uganda to Sondu Miriu power station in Western Kenya. "By the time of issuing this statement, electricity supply to the national grid had commenced with feeders in West Kenya," the statement said. The company promised to issue a comprehensive statement once it establishes why the two transmission lines tripped. "We wish to apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and assure them that everything possible is being done to restore power as quickly as possible," it said. The East African nation has been hit in the past by power outages which reached their peak in April in what Kenya Power blamed on the heavy rains. Recently, the government directed Kenya Power to sort out any inefficiency in its operations, adding that it will not accept any proposal to increase power tariff because it is a burden to the country. Kenya is facing twin pressure of electricity connection and generation.The interconnected installed capacity currently stands at 1,672 MW, including the 120 MW of the emergency capacity, according to Kenya Power. The current national interconnected system peak demand is 1,330 MW. But the country is banking on several power generation projects are currently under implementation.