Kenya is working on a schedule for potential rotational blackouts to protect the power transmission network against overloading.
The announcement on Monday by energy secretary Davis Chirchir follows a widespread blackout on Sunday, the third since August, due to overloading of power lines.
“‘We will be load-shedding pockets where demand is higher than what the line can carry,” Chirchir told reporters in the capital, Nairobi, using the term for rolling blackouts that’s been well known in South Africa for more than a decade. “It’s not that we don’t have enough power; it’s the network that is constrained.”
The country has also signed loan agreements with South Korea and the African Development Bank to help build a new power line in the west, which will be hardest hit by the planned load shedding.
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Kenya’s government is constrained in terms of funding and hasn’t invested as much as it needs in the transmission network, Chirchir said.
The East African nation requires US$5.3-billion to revamp its entire electricity network, energy principal secretary Alex Wachira said at the same briefing. — David Herbling, with Bella Genga, (c) 2023 Bloomberg LP