June 9, 2016

Summary

Monkey to blame for nation-wide blackout. The monkey fell into the mechanics of a power station causing a short in the circuit.

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Monkey to blame for nation-wide blackout

Monkey to blame for nation-wide blackout

The 4 hour nationwide power blackout that was experienced recently was triggered by a vervet monkey. On Tuesday morning, as KenGen wrote on Facebook, a monkey climbed on to the roof of Gitaru Power Station. The animal lost its balance and fell on a transformer causing it to shut down. This in turn caused a ripple effect with other transformers shutting down as well because of overload. Apparently the monkey survived the ordeal though it’s still unclear the status of the animal which was later picked by the Kenya Wildlife Service.

Businesses were the hardest hit by the blackout and some of them had to rely on generators to continue with operations.

The Gitaru Power Station is KenGen’s largest plant, generating 225-megawatts of electricity which is 10% of the country’s electricity.

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