The Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) has announced a power outage in the coastal region. This follows a fire incident at Rabai substation in Mombasa.
The power utility said that the outage affects Mombasa, Kilifi, Kwale, Tanariver and Lamu counties, with the fire was also contained.
“Our engineers are on site to assess the extent of the damage and restore normal electricity supply as soon as possible,” said KPLC.
Meanwhile the Kenya Breweries Limited (KBL) and East Africa Maltings want to generate electricity to backup supply by Kenya Power, joining manufacturers seeking independent energy sources. In a notice, the two subsidiaries of East Africa Breweries Limited said they intend to set up renewable energy generators at Nairobi and Kisumu plants.
Perennial power outages
This comes after the KPLC was summoned together with Energy CS Charles Keter to appear before senators over perennial power outages countrywide. Lawmakers expressed outrage about the inconvenience and business hardships caused by the frequent outages.
The East African Malting plans to set up a KVA generator at the Nairobi Industrial area Kampala road with a capacity to generate 2.2 Mw of electricity. They have sought for the approval from the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) with the goal of addressing the power disruptions challange. KBL will meanwhile set up two plants at its plants in Ruaraka and Kisumu whose power generation capacity stand at 9.3 and 2.4MW.
โThe purpose of the electric power generation is for own use as backup during power outages from the national electricity provider to ensure continuity of operations,โ said the pair of firms.
