Engineers have called on the government to form a task force to investigate the root cause of frequent power blackouts that have been witnessed in the country. In a statement released by Institution of Engineers of Kenya (IEK) President Eng. Erick Ohaga, they said the proposed task force should comprise Protection Engineers, System Control Engineers, Energy Experts, Academia, Power System Planning Engineers, Energy Regulators and the IEK.
While celebrating engineers from Kenya Power, Ketraco, Kengen and the Kenya Airports Authority who “worked tirelessly to restore power” during the most recent national outage last week, the Institution regretted the “continued relegation of engineering functions that require professional competency to non-engineers”.
The Institution asked the public to await the conclusion of in-depth investigations of the blackout causes rather than speculate on the same.
“Part of the design philosophy of power system network grid is resilience, protection and self-preservation, among others. As at now, from the information released by Kenya Power, it is evident that the operational feature of protection and self-preservation was actuated at the network system level”, noted the IEK.
