2023-08-27 08:28:02
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The longest nationwide blackout in Kenyans’ memory remained a mystery Sunday following the government power company blamed Africa’s largest wind farm, which in turn blamed the power grid.
Some of Kenya’s more than 50 million people, including those in the capital Nairobi, received power once more nearly 24 hours following the massive blackout occurred on Friday night. It was an embarrassing situation for this country, which is considered the economic hub of East Africa and has sought to promote itself as a technology hub for the continent, but continues to face problems due to alleged mismanagement and poor infrastructure.
Hundreds of people were stranded in the dark for hours at Kenya’s main international airport in Nairobi, prompting Transport Minister Kipchumba Murkomen to issue a rare public apology in a nation where tourism is a crucial part of the economy. .
“This situation will not happen once more,” Murkomen declared.
The director of the Kenya Airports Authority was sacked following it failed to start a generator serving the main international terminal.
Shortly before midnight Saturday, government utility Kenya Power offered the first detailed explanation for the blackout, saying it was due to a loss in electricity generation from the company’s Lake Turkana Wind Power plant, the largest wind farm in Kenya. Africa, which caused an imbalance that “disabled all other main generating units and stations, resulting in a total blackout on the grid.”
However, Lake Turkana Wind Power issued a statement denying it was at fault. Instead, it noted that it had been forced to disconnect from the grid due to an “overvoltage situation in the national grid system which, in order to avoid extreme damage, causes the wind farm to shut down automatically”. At that time, the plant generated almost 15% of the country’s production.
Such an outage should be immediately compensated by other power generators in the system, the company added, but continued blackouts on the national grid prevented the wind farm from coming back online.
Kenya Power indicated that it was not even able to resort to importing power from neighboring Uganda, a relatively quick option that for some reason was not available.
“We are working together to get the Uganda interconnector restored so we can improve our attempts to get the network back on track,” he said.
Kenya gets almost all its electricity from renewable sources, a fact the country will promote next month as it hosts Africa’s first Climate Summit.
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