Kenya Power to cut cost of connecting rural homes to grid
Kenya Power technicians repair power lines in Nyeri town in July. The firm plans to add a minimum 284,200 residential homes and 30,000 commercial customers to the grid. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
The connection rates are also expected to be considerably lower than the current market rates which sometimes run into hundreds of thousands of shillings.
Two projects with the promise of significantly pulling down electricity connection costs and lighting up huge swathes of rural Kenya are in the pipeline for 2015.
Kenya Power is looking to connect hundreds of thousands of homes and commercial customers to the grid through the Single Wire Earthing Return (SWER) system and the Last Mile Connectivity Project (LMCP). Although both projects are still at the tendering stage, it’s expected they will be awarded early next year.
The connection rates are also expected to be considerably lower than the current market rates which sometimes run into hundreds of thousands of shillings.
Commenting on the LMCP, Energy principal secretary Joseph Njoroge said that all power consumers within a 600-metre transformer radius will be connected and the charges deducted through monthly power bills in small instalments. The connection amounts under the programme will be announced in February but he promised fair rates.
“We are going to undertake connection completely differently from the way we have been doing it. Economists and engineers are already working on revised connection rates,” he said. On the other hand, SWER is a Kenya Power initiative aimed at significantly cutting its expenses by using a single, thinner and lighter cable as opposed to the current system that uses two or four cables to connect households to the nearest electricity pole.
Kenya Power is also planning to cut costs by using smaller poles that will be spaced 100 metres apart instead of the current 50 metres. The utility firm’s MD Ben Chumo said the design is popular in rural areas.
“Overall, the cost of connectivity in rural areas will be reduced given the amount of material that we are going to be using in the SWER design,” he said.
In a previous interview with the Business Daily, Mr Chumo indicated that the average amount could be as low as Sh30,000. The LMCP, whose $135 million (Sh12.2 billion) loan from the African Development Bank was signed by President Uhuru Kenyatta last week, is expected to add a minimum 284,200 residential homes and 30,000 commercial customers to the grid.
This translates to an additional 1.7 million people accessing electricity.
Mr Njoroge said that the government’s intention is to raise the connectivity rate from the current 32 per cent to 75 per cent in the next four years. This will be important if the country is to absorb the projected injection of 5,000MW by 2018, which is a capacity growth of over 300 per cent (from the current 1,652MW to 6,652MW).
The additional power is forcing Kenya Power to rethink its business model, including turning the country into a 24-hour economy and making the country’s manufactured products more competitive.
Team of experts
A team of experts from Kenya Power and the Energy ministry is working on details of cheaper off-peak electricity tariffs aimed at lowering production costs for industrialists and spurring round-the-clock production. Industrialists will enjoy a discount of 40 per cent on current tariffs between 11pm and 5am with the plan expected to be unveiled early 2015.
The industry discounts will be a follow up to the recently introduced lower rates for street lighting as the government looks to reduce insecurity and encourage more night-time commerce.
Additionally, the power company has undertaken a Sh1 billion project dubbed Boresha Stima Viwandani where industries will get dedicated power lines to ensure minimum supply interruptions.
