Kenya and Uganda are without national electricity supply due to technical problems

Nairobi, May 9 (EFE) – The two interconnected national power grids in Kenya and Uganda woke up on Saturday due to “technical problems in the transmission network”, which are being repaired, according to the Kenya Electric Corporation.

“We lost power supplies in the national grid due to disruptions in the transmission network at 5:49 am (2.49 GMT) this morning,” the Communications Department of Kenya Power said in a statement.

“Our engineers are working to identify the malfunction and restore the normal electricity supply,” added Kenya Power.

For its part, the Ugandan energy company Omemi also stated that there was an outage on the part of its suppliers across the nationwide network, and that they were working to restore service.

While supplies are slowly returning to different parts of Kenya, it may take longer in Uganda, as Omimi already announced on Friday that supplies are expected to be cut for “emergency unloading” from Saturday to Monday 9 AM to 5 PM. .

These cuts come after Kenya and Uganda witnessed overloads on their dams due to heavy rains in recent weeks that threaten to collapse hydropower plants.

Kenyan Energy Minister Charles Keter announced last Wednesday that the Masinga Dam, in the center of the country, which provides energy production for the hydropower station of the same name, has exceeded its capacity to a historic maximum of 1,058 meters above sea level.

For its part, the planned outages in Uganda were the drainage of water from the dams that feed the power plants in Nalupali, Kiira, Bogagali and Esimba, in different parts of the country.

Lake Victoria, the largest in Africa inundating Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, has grown to the point that it flooded some of the slums in Kampala and Entebbe (center).

The lake has grown to over 13.12 meters, just under the 13.46 meters recorded in 1964, the largest progress recorded so far, according to the regional newspaper The East African.

Heavy rain has reached Kampala, the capital of 1.5 million people on the shores of Lake Victoria, the second largest freshwater lake in the world, with an area of ​​69,000 square kilometers – a surface similar to that of Ireland – a type of funnel that collects water from rivers in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In addition, Ugandan engineers have been worried for days about the city of Jinja (east), where the country’s main hydroelectric plant is located a few meters from the point where Lake Victoria drains into the Nile. EFE