Kenya Power MD explains why Western, Nyanza regions often face power blackouts

Speaking on Citizen TV’s The Explainer show on Tuesday, Siror attributed the challenges affecting parts of Western Kenya and South Nyanza including Migori, Awendo and Kisii to constraints in the transmission network.

Eng. Siror revealed that most of the aforementioned regions are mostly served by renewable sources of energy including geothermal power in Olkaria which uses a longer route from Kibos in Kisumu to Awendo, a distance of about 500 kilometres.

According to the Kenya Power Managing Director, the longer the power line, the more the transmission losses and challenges.

“Wherever you have a very long line, serving any particular part of the country, it is prone to a lot of challenges. We have a major line called Olkaria where we have most of our rich Geothermal resources. We have a line that goes all the way to a place called Kibos in Kisumu, a distance of about 300 KM…from Kibos, we go to Muhoroni, a distance of about 40 kilometres, it goes to Chemosit (40km or 50 km), then to Sotik, Gegati, Awendo…,” he said.

Engineer Siror further explained that the constraint, not only leads to challenges in transmission but the line is also unable to evacuate all the power since it is overloaded and single-handly serves many regions.

“One of the main constraints against serving the Kisii region is that the link between Muhoroni and Chemosit is constrained in capacity,” he noted.

“The transmission link is unable to evacuate all the power that is required in that part of the country.”

On why most regions often experience insufficient power supply including rationing, Siror pointed out that since most of the power sources supplying the area are renewable sources including wind, solar and water, they are constantly affected by inadequacy.

He referred to the Lake Turkana Wind Power plant where he noted that as of Tuesday, October 17, the wind was inadequate to power generators and provide the usual 300 Mega Watts and could only produce about 60 Mega Watts.

In this particular case, he said the power company is forced to minimize power consumption.

“Some of the variable-renewable energy sources such as wind, at night but during the day solar, at times we have a low generation and have to do a low management,” Siror said.

“Tonight we have a very low wind output in Lake Turkana; the generation is rated at 300Mega Watts but this time it is about 60MW.”

The MD however reassured the public that the government had approved Ksh.16 billion to handle the issue of the transmission link by reducing the line distance from Kibos to Awendo from about 500km to about 80km by setting up a shorter link.

“As an assurance to the residents, we have been having a conversation with the government and want to assure that last week there was an approval by the cabinet of Ksh.16 billion,” he stated.

He added: “You have a situation where Awendo is served by close to 500 km but it is only about 200km from Olkaria. The solution is that there is a line that comes from Olkaria to Narok, a distance of about 60 km.”

“What is missing is a link between Narok and Bomet, a distance of about 80 km. Part of the Ksh.16 billion will address the link. By having a shorter link, we will have reduced the transmission losses.”