Fire at Kakamega Substation triggers power outage across five Western Kenya counties

A fire at Musaga Substation in Kakamega County on Friday disrupted electricity supply across parts of western Kenya, leaving homes and businesses in five counties without power. The outage, Kenya Power said in a statement, affected customers in Kakamega, Bungoma, Busia and Siaya counties, as well as parts of Vihiga County. The power provider is now using alternative supply lines to reconnect customers as technicians work to address the situation at the affected facility. “We are re-routing power through alternative supply lines to restore electricity to customers progressively,” Kenya Power said. The company did not provide a timeline for when normal supply would be fully restored, saying efforts to resolve the incident were ongoing. “We understand the disruption this is causing to homes and businesses,” the utility said, as it apologised to customers for the inconvenience caused by the outage. The incident comes nine days after a nationwide power outage on July 29, attributed to a system disturbance, disrupted normal activities across the country. Reports of the outage began emerging shortly after 8:20 pm, with dozens of users across social media platforms indicating that power had gone off almost simultaneously in their areas. The disruption affected homes and businesses, with many residents turning to social media to seek information on the cause and whether other parts of the country had also been affected. "Our technical teams are working to restore supply to the affected areas as quickly as possible,” the power provider said then. The outage marked yet another major interruption to electricity supply, renewing concerns over the reliability of Kenya's national power grid. Kenya has experienced several major power outages in recent years, with previous incidents linked to faults on transmission lines, grid disturbances and infrastructure failures. In such cases, electricity has typically been restored in phases as engineers work to identify and resolve the underlying problem.