Power black-outs fall by half in sector reforms

Incidents of power outages have fallen by more than half on the backdrop of institutional reforms in the energy sector.

According to data from the Ministry of Energy, the incidents of power outages decreased from 238,976 in 2020 to 113,385 in 2021 in July 2021.

Additional data from the Ministry shows the incidents have fallen by a further 30 per cent as of July this year.

“The institutional reforms within the energy sector have not only covered Kenya Power but also within KETRACO, REREC and the Energy Regulatory Corporation and have begun to improve the reliability of power,” Energy Cabinet Secretary Monica Juma said on Friday.

Recent institutional reforms in the sector have included the appointment of the Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (KETRACO) to oversight the country’s electricity network including key power plants feeding the national grid.

The reforms have created efficiency among stakeholders in the energy sector leading to improved grid stability and reliability.

The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) describes interruptions as the total unplanned and planned interruptions in comparison to the agreed service availability.

Power reliability is measured through two metrics; the system average interruption index (SAIDI) and the system average interruption frequency index (SAIFI)

The latter, (SAIFI) is established by dividing to the total number of interruptions for a group of customers by the number of all customers served.

SAIDI is meanwhile tallied by dividing the total minutes (or hours) of interruptions for a group of customers by the number of all customers served.

Despite the year-over-year improvement, power reliability came under pressure at the start of 2022 when the security of the national grid was compromised by vandals causing far-reaching outages to electricity supply.

The Ministry of Energy has since moved to secure the grid and its accompanying infrastructure in a bid to prevent the occurrence of such disruptions.

The Ministry has bet on further reforms in the energy sector to enhance power reliability.

“We are hoping we can continue to drive these efficiencies into the system. There is no reason why we should have outages so to speak,” added CS Juma.