Ministry of Energy sheds light on widespread Power Outage

The Ministry of Energy(MoE) has issued the statement on regular power outgages experienced Country wide.

In a joint Press Conference held by the Cabinet Secretary (CS) for Energy Davis Chirchir,Principal Secretary Alex Wachira,KPLC Chairman Ms.Joy Brenda Masinde and her counterpart CEO &MD Eng.Joseph Siror,Kengen CEO Eng.Peter Njenga,KETRACO MD Eng John Mativo and other top Ministry and sector officials at Kawi House said the outage was due to  the electric power system with Musaga substation supplying parts of Western Region remaining on supply from Uganda. The system demand at the time of incidence was 1,732MW.

The voltages and system frequency were satisfactory at the time of the incident.The system was therefore in a stable condition and there was 140MW of spinning reserve before the disturbance.

SEQUENCE OF EVENTS LEADING TO THE OUTAGE
The Muhoroni substation is supplied via two transmission links, i.e. Olkaria – Kibos – Kisumu -Muhoroni line, and Juja – Lessos – Muhoroni line.The two lines mainly supply electricity to Western,
South Nyanza and South Rift regions.
a) At 7.33pm the Kisumu-Muhoroni 132kV power line tripped arising from system constraints due to a sudden energy demand increase.
b) The loss of the Kisumu-Muhoroni link led to sudden increase in power flow on the Juja – Lessos – Muhoroni link, leading to overload at Olkaria 2 transformers and Dandora –Juja transmission link. This led to the cascade of generation trips resulting in the widespread power outages.
c) However, parts of Western region, including Bungoma, Kakamega and Busia remained on supply from Musaga substation using the alternative source of supply from the Uganda power system.
POWER RESTORATION
a) System restoration commenced immediately and by 1 am (this morning), 60% of customers had been reconnected to electricity.

b) By 2am, all areas were back on supply except parts of Nairobi, North Eastern and Coast regions which were restored back at 9.29am.

GRID CONSTRAINTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The Kenyan Electricity Grid is currently operating sub optimally with limited spinning reserves, low inertia, high proportion of intermittent generation, low Hydro generation and insufficient voltage control. These conditions make the system vulnerable to system disturbances.

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