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Kenya Power is yet to fully restore electricity supply nearly 24 hours after the country was hit by a nationwide outage.

In an update on Saturday evening, the management of the power distributor said it was still experiencing challenges stabilising its supply.

Kenya Power said it had reached out to Uganda to restore electricity imported from the neighbouring country to boost the local supply.

“We are jointly working on having the Uganda interconnector restored so as to enhance our grid recovery efforts,” Kenya Power said.

According to the state-backed utility firm, which enjoys a monopoly in Kenya, the country experienced a nationwide power outage at around 9:45 pm on Friday night after losing 270MW generation from Lake Turkana Wind Power Plant (LTWP).

“The loss triggered an imbalance in the power system and tripped all other main generation units and stations, leading to a total outage on the grid,” Kenya Power said.

Kenya Power explained that the system demand at the time was 1855.8 MW and therefore, a loss of approximately 15 per cent of generation was expected to cause a widespread power outage.

The company began restoration efforts by isolating the lines carrying the affected electricity generators.

Further, electricity from Seven Fork Hydro power stations was utilized to kick start the restoration exercise, an option that Kenya Power said takes much longer compared to electricity import from Uganda, which is faster but was unavailable at the time.

“Most of the grid was sequentially restored from Central and Eastern Regions where the hydro generation is located and towards Nairobi. By 1145 hrs today most of the transmission grid had been energized and normal power supply to customers restored as generation came on board,” the company explained.

Kenya Power also said it was in the final stages of onboarding power from the Olkaria complex where most of the geothermal plants are located to allow the restoration of power supply to parts of Nairobi, Coast, Western, Central Rift, North Rift and South Nyanza that are still off supply.

“We shall continue to update as we finalise the restoration efforts. We apologise to our esteemed customers for the inconvenience caused and thank them for their patience,” Kenya Power added.

Earlier, the Energy Committee of the National Assembly summoned Energy Cabinet Secretary (CS) Davis Chirchir and Kenya Power CEO Joseph Siror to shed light on the nationwide blackout.

The two officials are expected to appear before the committee on Thursday next week to give a comprehensive report of what led to the outage.

The committee chaired by Mwala MP Vincent Musyoka, said it was embarassing that the blackout had affected the country’s main airport, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

“The chairman has directed that we summon CS Energy together with the CEO KPLC on Thursday to explain the cause of the current nationwide blackout which has paralysed the nation, including the International Airport,” the communication reads in part.

Passengers were left stranded at JKIA for at least two hours last night after an automatic generator at the airport failed to start.

On his part, Transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen reacted to the blackout at JKIA by cracking the whip on top officials of the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA).

KAA Managing Director Alex Gitari and General Engineering Manager Fred Odawo had their contracts terminated over the incident.

The CS said the contracts of Gitari and Odawo had been terminated “by mutual consent.”

Henry Ogoye, currently serving as the Head of Corporate Planning, was appointed the acting Managing Director of KAA while Eng. Samuel Mochache was picked to replace Odawo in an acting capacity.