The Resilience & Reliability Analyst: A Data Story on Kenya's Energy Future

Project Description

In recent years, Kenya has faced recurring challenges with load shedding, impacting economic stability and daily life. This project moves beyond the headlines to find the data-driven truth. It analyzes over two decades (2000-2024) of Kenya's electricity data to answer a critical question: Why does this keep happening, and is our national strategy to fix it working?

This analysis is presented as a data story, walking through a 6-chart narrative that diagnoses the historical problem, analyzes the current strategy, and delivers a final, data-driven verdict on the future of Kenya's energy security.

View the final deployed project here: `[LINK TO DEPLOYED WEBSITE

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Load shedding is not just an inconvenience; it's a critical threat to Kenya's economy and daily life. This project is a direct response to this recurring crisis. It analyzes over two decades (2000-2024) of Kenya's electricity data to move past the headlines and answer the real questions:

• Why does this keep happening? * Is this a new, sudden problem, or a long-term structural failure?
• Is our national strategy to fix it actually working?

This analysis is presented as a "scrollytelling" data story, walking through a 6-chart narrative that diagnoses the root cause of our grid vulnerability and delivers a final verdict on the solutions being deployed.

View the final deployed project here: [LINK TO YOUR LOVABLE WEBSITE]

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Problem Statements

This analysis was built to test two central hypotheses about the load shedding crisis:

• H1: The root cause of load shedding is not a recent failure, but a long-term structural vulnerability. This vulnerability is a costly over-reliance on rain-fed hydropower, leading to a "Drought Penalty."
• H2: The national strategy to pivot to Geothermal and Wind is the correct solution, but it is not being implemented fast enough to close the gap between rising demand and new generation, leading to continued shortfalls.

Project Objectives

To test these hypotheses, the project had three main objectives:

1. To quantify the relationship between load shedding (grid deficits) and its historical root cause (the "Drought Penalty").
2. To evaluate the effectiveness of the "Great Rebalancing" (the national pivot to Geothermal and Wind) as a strategic solution.
3. To deliver a final, data-driven verdict on whether the current pace of new generation is sufficient to end load shedding in the near future.

Data Sources

The analysis was built on two primary datasets, both sourced from Ember's aggregated energy data:

1. Kenya Electricity Generation (2000-2024): Annual TWh generation, broken down by source (hydro, fossil, geothermal, wind, solar, etc.).
2. Kenya Electricity Demand (2000-2024): Annual TWh total national demand.

Methodology & ETL

The raw data was processed in Tableau to create a clean, analysis-ready dataset.

1. Extract: Loaded the raw energy data.
2. Transform:
   • Filtered the data to include only country = "Kenya" and year >= 2000.
   • Engineered new features (calculated fields) critical for the analysis:
     • Grid Surplus/Deficit: SUM(electricity_generation) - SUM(electricity_demand). This is our primary proxy for "load shedding."
     • % Share: (e.g., SUM(hydro_electricity) / SUM(electricity_generation))
     • Total New Renewables: SUM(geothermal) + SUM(wind) + SUM(solar)
3. Load: Used this transformed dataset as the single source for all visualizations.

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The Data Story: A 6-Chart Narrative

The final project tells a story in six charts, each answering a specific question about the load shedding crisis.

1. The Growing Challenge: Kenya's Race for Power

• Insight: This chart frames the core conflict that enables load shedding. It shows the dangerously thin margin between what we need (demand) and what we make (generation).

2. The Load Shedding Gap (Grid Surplus/Deficit)

• Insight: This is the load shedding chart. It quantifies the problem, showing the actual TWh deficit (red bars) that citizens experience as blackouts. It proves this is a recurring, structural issue, not a new one.

3. The Historical Culprit: The "Drought Penalty"

• Insight: This chart diagnoses the historical cause of the deficits. The "X" pattern proves that for decades, a dip in rain (blue line) directly caused a costly and polluting spike in fossil fuels (red line).

4. The Great Rebalancing: Kenya's Energy Mix

• Insight: This chart shows the strategic response to the problem from Chart 3. The "crossover" in 2015 is the moment Kenya's strategy to fight the Drought Penalty (by building Geothermal) went into full effect.

5. The New Engines of Growth: Geothermal vs. Wind

• Insight: This chart isolates the solutions. It shows the two "heroes" (Geothermal and Wind) that are being deployed to kill the red bars from Chart 2.

6. The Verdict: The Gap Persists

• Insight: This final side-by-side view delivers the verdict. It compares the problem (the red deficit bars) to the solution (the green renewable bars). The conclusion is clear: the solution is not yet big enough.

Key Takeaways

• Load Shedding is Structural: The crisis is not new. The data proves it is a structural deficit, proven by 20+ years of recurring generation gaps.
• The Root Cause is the "Drought Penalty": The problem has been a costly and predictable over-reliance on rain-fed hydropower.
• The Strategy is Correct: The "Great Rebalancing"—Kenya's pivot to Geothermal and Wind—is clearly the right solution.
• The Final Verdict: We Have a Speed Problem. The 2024 data is clear: our new renewable engines are not yet growing fast enough to close the gap. To end load shedding, we must build faster.

Tools Used

• Data Transformation: Tableau, Microsoft Excel
• Data Visualization: Tableau Public
• Deployment: Lovable (for the portfolio website)