Another national power blackout

Kenya was plunged into a power blackout Sunday morning barely six months after the previous national outage highlighted the derelict state of electricity supply.

The Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) blamed the national blackout on a breakdown at major transmission substation at Juja Road, east of the capital.

The Sunday outage caught many by surprise, as Christians were preparing to attend church services.

Frequent power blackouts are a hallmark of the state of Kenya’s power generation and distribution facilities, most of which were constructed in the 1970s and 80s. Increasing demand for power from a growing population has placed a strain on Kenya’s aging infrastructure.

Daily power outages are a common occurrence that have frustrated economic development in Kenya. A typical enterprise will experience at least two outages per day with high probability of blown computers and other equipment, resulting in heavy losses.

Inspite of the poor quality of supply, Kenyans are paying possibly the highest electricity tariffs in the world. In June this year, KPLC announced a price increase of 20% but consumers put the increase at more than 50% based on the bills they receive. KPLC says the higher-than-expected increase in electricity tariffs is due to high oil prices emanating from the use of oil-powered generators.

As a consequence of threats from manufacturers to relocate their operations from Kenya, Acting Finance Minister John Michuki last week announced a reduction in taxes for oil products. This, according to Michuki, should help reduce electricity costs and thereby save thousands of jobs.

Read about the May 2008 national blackout >>