Scheduled Maintenance to Impact Key Commercial Hubs

Kenya Power has announced a planned power interruption for Thursday, November 27, 2025, that will affect key business and residential areas in Nairobi for up to eight hours. In a notice issued on Wednesday, November 26, the utility company stated the outage is necessary to facilitate network maintenance. The interruptions are scheduled to affect parts of Lang'ata from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EAT, and the Busia Road area, off Enterprise Road, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. EAT.

The Lang'ata outage will impact a wide range of commercial and institutional customers, including Galleria Mall, the Carnivore Restaurant and Hotel, KWS Headquarters, Lang'ata Barracks, and several large housing estates such as Phenom Park. The interruption on Busia Road will affect all adjacent customers in the industrial area. Similar maintenance-related blackouts are also scheduled for parts of Kajiado, Mombasa, and Kwale counties on the same day.

The High Cost of Power Unreliability for Kenyans

For Nairobi's businesses, Thursday's blackout is not an isolated event but part of a persistent pattern of power unreliability that inflicts significant financial damage. The Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) has warned that frequent power outages could shrink the economy by 10-20%, with potential annual losses amounting to approximately $2 billion (KSh 260 billion). These figures highlight the severe impact on productivity, citing material losses, idle labour, and equipment damage as major contributors to the financial drain.

A 2023 analysis by Business Daily estimated that a nationwide power interruption costs the manufacturing sector alone around KSh 119.4 million per hour, given that commercial and industrial firms account for 54% of Kenya Power's electricity sales. These outages force many businesses to rely on expensive diesel generators, with diesel prices having increased by 12% in 2023, further escalating operational costs. The unreliability of the grid is a major deterrent for investors and a significant operational hurdle for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that cannot afford backup power solutions.

An Aging Grid Under Pressure

The frequent maintenance schedules underscore the challenges facing Kenya's aging energy infrastructure, which is struggling to keep pace with record demand for electricity. President William Ruto recently acknowledged that the country's capacity of 2,311 MW was being outstripped by demand, necessitating load shedding and a push to increase capacity to at least 5,000 MW to support industrial growth. In response, the government has lifted a seven-year moratorium on signing new Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) and is fast-tracking talks with 65 energy producers to shore up the national supply.

While Kenya Power frames these interruptions as essential for improving long-term grid stability, the short-term economic pain is acute. Research indicates that power outages have a direct adverse effect on business performance, with one study finding that an interruption in supply can lead to a 40.54% drop in profits for affected firms. This highlights the critical need for investment in modernizing the country's transmission and distribution networks to reduce the frequency of both planned and unplanned outages.

Kenya Power's Modernization Efforts

Amidst these challenges, Kenya Power has initiated steps to enhance its service delivery. The utility is currently rolling out a new meter reading system using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Following a successful pilot in Nairobi, the system is being deployed nationwide to improve billing accuracy for its 1.8 million post-paid customers by eliminating manual data entry errors. The company has also stated its commitment to improving service reliability through its routine maintenance activities. However, for the businesses and residents of Lang'ata and Busia Road, these long-term goals will provide little comfort during Thursday's eight-hour disruption.