Kenya suffered a nationwide blackout on Friday morning, the second in a week. State officials have been unable to explain to the public the cause of the increasingly frequent power outages.
In a press briefing on the same day, Energy Cabinet Secretary Opiyo Wandayi revealed that one of the reasons for the blackouts is that the country’s power generation capacity is limited.
The CS revealed that on August 21, Kenya Power shed six megawatts (MW) of demand, after peak demand hit a record 2,239MW, while the reserve margin was only nine megawatts against a system requirement of 310MW.
This confused a section of the public, which had been used to the commonly held belief that Kenya has excess power.
Does Kenya have surplus power?
The country does not have excess power. Kenya has an installed power capacity of 3,199.9MW, according to the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra).
This includes 200MW imported from Ethiopia and 210.3MW of solar, which is produced locally but is unavailable at night. Further, it includes 425.5MW of wind, whose availability rarely exceeds 65 percent annually.
All these factors mean that the actual generation from this installed capacity is much lower. Last week, Mr Wandayi said the country’s reserve margin stood at just nine megawatts when peak demand hit a record 2,238MW last month.
This is against a reserve margin requirement of 310MW, which means that the country had just 2.9 percent of the recommended threshold.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) recommends a supply reserve margin within the range of 20 – 35 percent of the peak load.
What is load shedding?
Load shedding is a way of spreading demand for electricity across multiple sources. Load shedding involves cutting off supply to some consumers as a temporary measure to relieve pressure on a primary energy source when demand for electricity is greater than that primary power source can supply.
In essence, the national grid can become unstable if there is insufficient supply to meet consumer demand. This carries the risk of damaging transmission equipment if load shedding is not triggered.
Load shedding occurs mainly because there is not enough generation capacity or infrastructure to produce and distribute electricity to meet demand.
What has caused these power generation capacity and transmission constraints?
Mr Wandayi said last week that Kenya's power generation and transmission problems are the result of years of under-investment in the energy sector.
Part of this has to do with the ban on the signing of new power purchase agreements (PPAs) in 2021, which was imposed by former President Uhuru Kenyatta following the recommendation of a taskforce that he had appointed earlier that year to look into the causes of high-power bills and recommend measures to reduce prices.
Kenya has also, for years, neglected to invest in its transmission network. This has become a major problem because demand for electricity is growing rapidly, but the existing transmission infrastructure does not have sufficient capacity to handle the increased load.
What is the impact of frequent power outages?
These blackouts have significant consequences on businesses. Small businesses that cannot afford backup power sources, such as generators, are forced to close shop during the outages.
Large firms, such as manufacturers, are also major victims as their production suffers.
The State, however, wants to penalise Kenya Power and future power distributors for avoidable power outages in a bid to improve the quality of supply.
The draft Electricity (Reliability and Quality of Service and Quality of Supply) Regulations, 2022 will compel power firms to compensate customers for unplanned outages that result in property damage, loss of business or death.
What is the government doing to improve power generation and expand transmission?
The government has taken several steps in recent years to address the challenges. On the generation side, the Cabinet lifted the ban on the signing of new PPAs in February last year.
However, the process is being delayed by Parliament.
Further, the government has opened up investment in transmission lines under public private partnerships (PPPs).
For instance, the State has contracted Africa 50 to build the 165km 400kV Losuk-Lessos and 72km 220kV Kisumu-Musaga lines for Sh44 billion. Adani Energy Solutions Ltd will also construct two power lines and substations at a cost of Sh127 billion under a PPP.
This is, however, not enough and more large-scale investments must be attracted into the sector to ensure that there is sufficient supply of affordable and stable power.
What are consumers doing to cope with power cuts and high bills?
In light of the high cost of electricity and the increasing frequency of major power outages, many customers are considering or have already switched from the national power grid in favour of their own generation.
The energy regulator says that as of December 2023, it had licensed 449.5MW of captive power generation.
Captive power plants are embedded electricity generation units used by commercial or industrial consumers to meet their internal electricity needs.
Any individual or company that wants to generate power of more than one megawatt (MW) has to seek the approval of the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra), according to the Energy Act of 2019.
By switching to own-source generation, consumers seek to lower their power bills in the long term and improve the reliability of their supply.
