The government is considering introducing planned power outages that are popularly known as load shedding in South Africa.
This has been revealed by Energy Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir. According to Chirchir, the scheduled power outages will help tame nationwide power blackouts that have now become a regular occurrence over the past few months.
Chirchir says that the planned outages will tame high demand for power that has been blamed for causing the outages
“The nationwide blackout on Sunday was caused by an overload that was witnessed along the Kisumu -Muhuroni line which only carries 80 mega watts.Yesterday the line was carrying 149 Megawatts,” said Chirchir.
“The gist of it is lack of investment in the network for a long time. We will be scheduling some load-shedding.”
According to Chirchir, the load shedding will make it possible for the construction of the Narok-Bomet alternative line as well as the completion of the Sondu-Ndhiwa line to avoid overloads on the major Kisumu-Muhuroni power line.
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“Construction of the Narok-Bomet 132kV and completion of Sondu -Ndhiwa power lines will de-load Kisumu -Muhuroni Chemosit power line to provide stability in South Nyanza and Central Rift regions,” said Chirchir.
The cabinet secretary further claimed that the government had not made any investments in power transmission systems in the country over the past six years.
“The country has not had investments for the power transmission system networks for over six years.Government waiting for taxes to build the networks is what has caused this problem,” he said.
