Three-Phase Power in Nairobi: Balancing, Fault-Finding and Upgrades

The classic symptom: half the building works

If some circuits are live and others are completely dead, and there is no obvious tripped breaker, you have almost certainly lost a phase. On a three-phase supply this is common and it is urgent, not because of the inconvenience, but because three-phase motors running on two phases overheat and destroy themselves within minutes.

Anything with a three-phase motor (a lift, a borehole pump, a large air conditioning plant) should be switched off until the phase is restored.

Balancing

The most neglected part of three-phase work is balance. Circuits get added over the years to whichever phase was convenient, and eventually one phase carries far more than the others. That causes voltage differences between phases, overheating on the loaded phase, and higher losses.

Rebalancing is often a morning’s work at the board and is one of the cheapest genuine improvements available on an older commercial installation.

Upgrading from single phase

Households add three-phase when load grows past what a single-phase supply can carry: usually a borehole pump, a large water heater, welding equipment or a workshop. The upgrade involves KPLC as well as us, and the lead time is theirs rather than ours. We will be honest about that timeline before you commit.

Testing

Phase rotation matters wherever a motor is involved: a pump running backwards will move very little water while sounding entirely normal. We check rotation on every three-phase job, which is exactly what a phase rotation meter exists for and exactly what is skipped when work is done unlicensed.