The 2023 Kenya Nationwide Blackout
On 25 August 2023, Kenya: Kenya's grid was down for over 12 hours after a large wind farm went offline, and the utility and the wind farm disagree on which failed first.
Key Facts
- The blackout hit Kenya on Friday 25 August 2023.
- Kenya's utility and a wind farm operator gave opposing explanations for the nationwide blackout.
- The outage lasted more than 12 hours.
- The wind plant was producing 270 megawatts when it went offline.
What Happened
A nationwide blackout hit Kenya on Friday 25 August 2023 and left the country without electricity for more than 12 hours, according to Kenyan reporting at the time.
Kenya Power said the outage originated from the loss of 270 MW of generation at the Lake Turkana Wind Power plant, which triggered an imbalance in the power system and tripped all the other main generation units, leading to a total outage on the grid.
Lake Turkana Wind Power rejected that account. It said it was forced offline and stopped generating because of an overvoltage in the national grid, a condition in which the plant switches itself off automatically to avoid extreme damage. The two accounts agree that the plant, which was supplying 270 MW at the time, went offline, but they disagree on whether that disconnection caused the collapse or was a protective reaction to a fault on the grid. This page does not choose between them.
Cause
Disputed: the loss of a 270 megawatt wind farm, or that wind farm tripping on a grid overvoltage
Researched independently from public reporting, not from this site's own data. Source: Citizen Digital.
Related
Cite this page
World Power Monitor. (2023). The 2023 Kenya Nationwide Blackout: What Happened and Why. https://worldpowermonitor.com/grid-events/kenya-blackout-2023/
World Power Monitor. The 2023 Kenya Nationwide Blackout: What Happened and Why. Data as of 2023-08-25. https://worldpowermonitor.com/grid-events/kenya-blackout-2023/
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