President William Ruto now says the government has been forced into daily load-shedding, shutting off some parts of the country from power supply between 5pm and 10pm, to keep the national grid stable and cope with the growing power demand.

The President, who addressed Kenyans living in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday night, said the country needed over Ksh.1 trillion to boost its power capacity to at least 5,000 megawatts to spur growth.

The President explained the plan to ramp up power production to meet the growing domestic and industrial needs, now standing at 3,158 megawatts at peak hours.

Kenya’s power supplier, Kenya Power, has backed the President’s position, saying the grid has in recent days been overwhelmed, especially after sunset when solar power is lost and the national grid experiences a drop in supply from existing wind-power producers.

Without giving a specific time when the load-shedding began, Kenya Power, which has about 10 million customers, said the downtime at night has led to scheduled rationing.

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