REVEALED: Why country was plunged into darkness on Wednesday

KAMPALA

Generators at the Kiira and Nalubaale hydropower plants failed last night, plunging the country into darkness for three hours, electricity distributor Umeme has said.

Umeme’s media manager Stephen Ilungole attributed the failure to a technical glitch.

Since the power generation plants are linked to the transmission and the distribution lines, the failure at the Kiira and Nalubaale plants was ‘transmitted’ to Bujagali hydropower plant.

Bujagali power plant’s general manager John Berry said they had to “shut down” their plant.
He referred the Daily Monitor to Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Limited (UETCL) for details.
“I wouldn’t be able to answer that. What happened [last night] was external to Bujagali,” Mr Berry told the Monitor.
UETCL’s acting chief executive officer William Kiryahika, an engineer, said they are trying to establish the real cause of the blackout.
He added that what happened last night rarely happens.
He said though that a blackout is not a single or isolated event.
“It is a cascade of events that ultimately lead to system collapse. We are going to investigate to establish the cause of the blackout,” Mr Kiryahika said.
He referred the Monitor to Eskom for details.
When contacted, Eskom’s operations manager Mr Peter Tentena said Eskom would issue a statement later to explain the blackout.
Nalubaale was commissioned in 1954 whereas Kiira was commissioned in 2003.
Both power plants are operated by Eskom Uganda Limited.
According to Mr Ilungole, power was restored after Kenya Power & Lighting Company Ltd extended power to Tororo in eastern Uganda.
He said that enabled Bujagali to start restoration which was fully effected by 10pm.

In December 2014, the Electricity Regulatory Authority’s director technical regulation Ms Ziria Tibalwa Waako said through an in-house newsletter that blackouts could be attributed to old equipment.
“Old equipment may fail to operate thereby leading to power outage,” Mr Tibalwa wrote then.
She also attributed blackouts to the lighting damaging electrical substations, power line conductors and power supply equipment.
In November 2013, residents of Kampala went without power for hours after fire licked up the Kampala North UETCL/Umeme substation.

The fire was attributed to a failure by a protection system on the Nakulabye feeder.
That failure led to the heating up of the cables in the control room of the Umeme, Uganda’s main power distributor, portion of the substation.

It also led to the heating up of the cables running up to the series reactor for the 132/11kV transformer.
As a result of this, the Umeme control room and the series reactor were damaged.

The fault was then rapidly passed through [from the 11kV] to the 132kV network, which is under the UETCL, which wheels bulk electricity from the generators to the distribution company’s substations.

In previous interviews with some millers, the millers said that when power goes off, when it suddenly comes on, it could destroy the motors of their mills and, therefore, cost them upwards of Shs3 million to repair.