Kenya Power has floated a tender seeking to acquire distribution transformers at a cost of Sh2.11 billion, to plug a shortage occasioned by a rise in demand from industries and vandalism.
The State-owned power distributor says it is targeting 1,061 transformers whose sizes range from 200/11kVA (kilovolts ampere), 1MVA (megavolt-ampere)/11kV and 1MVA 33kV. Kenya Power floated the tender last month and interested firms had up to the end of this month to submit applications.
John Ngeno, general manager of supply chain and logistics at Kenya Power, told Business Daily that tender was prompted by a surge in demand from businesses and the need to replace faulty transformers.
"The demand is coming from both replacement of faulty transformers and a big number of paid up customers waiting to be connected to power,” Dr Ngeno said on Thursday.
“Kenya Power targets to have the distribution transformers delivered by January- February 2025 to urgently restore customers who are out of supply and connect those paid up.”
Kenya Power is also grappling with increased vandalism of transformers with the firm saying that it lost 110 of them valued at Sh137 million between August last year and September this year.
Acquisition of the critical kits is key to helping Kenya Power end connection delays to the affected customers and further boost electricity sales.
The company sold 10,516 Gigawatt hours (GWh) of power in the year ended June, a 2.76 percent from the 10,233 GWh sold in the year to June 2023.
The increased electricity sales, coupled with a strengthening shilling saw Kenya Power post a net profit of Sh30.08 billion in the year to June, reversing a net loss of Sh3.19 billion a year ago.
The utility firm surpassed its target of new connections in the year, adding 447,251 against the targeted 400,000. This pushed its customer base to 9.66 million.
The transformers to be supplied by local manufacturers only, are a boost to the firm’s efforts to end customer frustration linked to lack of critical kits.
Kenya Power has in the past two years also acquired 1.2 million meters as it races to end delays and drive sales in the race to remain on the profitability path.
Dr Ngeno added that purchase of the distribution transformers is also driven by the goal to connect four million customers by 2030, in line with the firm’s growth plan.
Kenya Power had in recent years been forced to slow down on acquisition of critical kits such as meters and transformers, due to court cases that at one point the company said, were driven by malicious ‘tenderpreneurs’.
The drawn out court cases prompted the firm to disclose plans of buying critical kits via the Specially Permitted Procurement model (SPP).
The Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act however, compels government entities to seek approval from the National Treasury whenever they wish to procure goods or services via the SPP model.
