Power grid security

Monkey knocks out Kenya's entire power grid after 'falling onto transformer at electricity plant'

A monkey has been blamed for causing a nationwide blackout in Kenya after 'falling onto a transformer at a power station'.

The country on Africa's east coast was without electricity for more than three hours today after the incident shortly after 11.30am local time.

Electricity company KenGen released a statement this afternoon claiming that the outage was the result of an ape climbing on a power station roof and tripping a transformer.

It said: "At 1129 hours this morning, a monkey climbed on the roof of Gitaru Power Station and dropped onto the transformer tripping it.

"This caused other machines at the power station to trip on overload resulting in a loss of more than 180MW form this plant, which triggered a national power blackout.