Friday, January 14, 2022 – A former Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) employee has revealed the reason why there was a nationwide power outage in the country on Monday and Tuesday.
In an interview with Citizen TV on Thursday, former KPLC Manager in Charge of Transmission, Eng. Sammy Muita said that most parts of the country were plunged into darkness on Monday and Tuesday because the four power towers that collapsed in Imara Daima, Embakasi were part of a double circuit system.
Asked to explain why some people’s power was restored even though the lines were still being repaired, Muita revealed that if one circuit is lost, the system can still be sustained. However, when both are down, it can’t.
“If you lose one circuit, the power swings to the rest of the system and it still holds.
“That is what is called the n-1 reliability criteria. But if two collapse, you can’t sustain the rest of the system because there is no infrastructure that can be built with such redundancy of n-2.
“In the same way, if you shut one eye, you can still see with the other one. That is how the system is built,” Muita explained.
According to him, most people around Nairobi went without electricity since the power from the hydro system could not be fed into the Southern and Northern parts of the city.
Further, Muita observed that the government may spend up to Sh 30 million to fully restore the power but denied claims that Kenya Power staff were behind the outage.
“I think we can rule out sabotage because if it was the case, then you would find the disconnected parts on the ground.
“This is a matter of vandalism, people go and sell those parts as scrap metals. Some steel manufacturers buy from these people,” he argued.
Muita’s clarification comes even as Interior Cabinet Secretary, Dr.Fred Matiang’i asked the Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI), George Kinoti to launch investigations on the power outage claiming it might be act sabotage by former KPLC employees.
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