The longest nationwide power outage in Kenyans’ memory remains a mystery as the government-owned power company blames a failure at Africa’s largest wind farm, which laid the responsibility on the power grid instead
NAIROBI, Kenya — The longest nationwide power outage in Kenyans’ memory remained a mystery Sunday as the government-owned power company blamed a failure at Africa’s largest wind farm, which laid the responsibility on the power grid instead.
Some of Kenya’s more than 50 million people, including in the capital, Nairobi, saw power return almost 24 hours after the massive outage occurred late Friday. It was an embarrassment to the East African economic hub that has sought to promote itself as a tech center on the continent but remains challenged by alleged mismanagement and poor infrastructure.
Hundreds of people were stranded in darkness for hours at Kenya’s main international airport in Nairobi, leading to a rare public apology from a government minister in a country where tourism is a key part of the economy. “This situation WILL NOT happen again,” transport minister, Kipchumba Murkomen, said.
The head of the Kenya Airports Authority was fired after a generator serving the main international terminal had failed to start.
Shortly before midnight Saturday, Kenya Power offered the first detailed explanation of the outage, blaming it on a loss of power generation from the Lake Turkana Wind Power plant, Africa’s largest wind farm, causing an imbalance that “tripped all other main generation units and stations, leading to a total outage on the grid.”
But Lake Turkana Wind Power in a statement denied it was to blame. Instead, it said it had been forced to go offline by an “overvoltage situation in the national grid
Read more on abcnews.go.com