Garissa hit by blackout due to faulty substation

Thousands of Garissa residents have been hit by a power outage since Tuesday, which has been attributed to a fault in the substation that serves the area.

The areas that have been affected by the blackout are Madogo, Bagale KBC, Iftin, Bulla Game, Bulla Mzuri, Tawakal, Bashal, Modika, Garissa University and surrounding areas.

Kenya Power, the country’s sole power distributor, has since issued a statement on Wednesday morning saying that the substation belongs to the Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (KETRACO).

Substations are critical in the national power grid and regulate the supply of electricity by converting it into different voltages that are safe to use by different customer categories.

Kenya Power said that the two companies have dispatched a team to the area to resolve the issue and restore power supply.

“Parts of Garissa town have been without power since yesterday due to a fault at a KETRACO substation that serves the area. A dedicated team from KETRACO and Kenya Power is on site working to resolve the issue. Power restoration is expected later today,” said the utility.

The Garissa outage is a reminder of the frequent power outages that have hit customers over the past year, often affecting most parts of the country. The outages have been attributed to inadequate power transmission infrastructure which is stuggling to cope with the increased demand countrywide.

As a result, the System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) of power supply has gone up over the period. SAIFI measures the frequency of power outages per customer. A higher score shows an increase in blackouts while a decrease in the score shows a decline in the outages.

The SAIFI for the year ended June 2024 was 3.96 interruptions per customer up from 3.75 in the year to June 2023, according to the latest statistics reports released by the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) last week.

“This exceeded EPRA’s target of 2.15 interruptions per customer for the 2023/24 tariff control period,” said EPRA.

Interruptions were most frequent in April 2024, with 5.03 interruptions per customer while July 2023 has the least number of outages at 2.81 interruptions per customer.

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