Energy Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir has revealed 5 faulty transmitters caused last month’s countrywide blackout.
“The non-functionality of five transmitter masts could likely have caused an over voltage that interfered and led to power tripping at the Lake Turkana wind power plant in Laisamis Marsabit county”, said CS Chirchir.
Additionally, the plant had an inconsistency of power voltage along the transmitter line between Kijabe and Mount Longonot.
The inconsistency was detected and first revealed by the management of the Lake Turkana Wind Power plant during a site inspection at the firm by the Senate Energy Committee on September 25.
“We are investigating the five towers that went down between Kijabe and Mt Longonot to ensure if it was as a result of poor workmanship.
I have asked KETRACO to establish if it’s the contractor to take liability for poor workmanship,” said CS Chirchir.
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The Parliamentary watchdog expressed their concerns while demanding answers as to how the government ended up footing a total Ksh.7.1 billion as compensation to Lake Turkana Wind Power due to a delay in enabling a transmitter inter connector by KETRACO for distribution of power from the plant to Suswa in 2017.
“Lake Turkana was ready in September 2017, but connector came 422 days later. Lake Turkana was entitled to payment when the generation was ready, however connector wasn’t ready. Transmitter inter connector delay amounted to Ksh.127 million which the government entered into an agreement with Lake Turkana,” stated CS Chirchir.
However, Chirchir cleared the air over the government’s payment of Ksh.7 billion as compensation to the Lake Turkana Wind Power over failure by KETRACO to install a transmitter inter connector line to Suswa on time.
National Blackout
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The company, in a statement to newsrooms, stated that the outage was caused by a “general system disturbance.”
National Assembly Energy Committee further summoned CS Chirchir and Kenya Power CEO Joseph Siror to explain the cause of the nationwide blackout.
Lake Turkana Wind Power had been blamed for the outage. Subsequently The Power plant dismissed reports by Kenya Power that it was responsible for the nationwide supply interruption that affected the country last month.
In a statement, the plant said it was forced to go offline and stop generation following an overvoltage in the national grid which caused the power plant to go off automatically to avoid extreme damage.
