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Kenya’s sole electricity distributor said on Tuesday it had fully restored the grid’s supplies after a nationwide outage earlier in the day which it said was caused by a fault at one of the country’s hydro power dams.
“Our technical teams have been able to restore supply to the affected areas … the country is now back to normal supply,” Kenya Power’s network general manager Daniel Tare said in a statement.
The company said earlier Tuesday supply was knocked out at 11.30 a.m. local time after a technical fault at Gitaru Hydro power station.
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The station is operated by Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen), the east African country’s biggest power generator.
Kenya Power said the fault had stopped generation at the station, causing other sources of power to trip.
Blackouts occur regularly in Kenya, partly because of an ageing energy network and insufficient generation capacity. Many businesses in Nairobi and other big towns operate back-up generators.
During the time of the outage on Tuesday, a deafening drone from temporary power supply generators could be heard in parts of Nairobi.
