900,000 consumers had erroneous Kenya Power bills in January - ERC

Some 900,000 Kenyans were affected by Kenya Power system upgrade leading to erroneous bills in January.

The upgrade was, however, done last year, Energy Regulatory Commission Director General Pavel Oimeke said.

Out of the 6.5 million power consumers, 900,000 were affected by the transition from old to new system.

Mr Oimeke, however assured Kenyans slapped with erroneous bills that their power will not be cut.

He directed Kenya Power to address grievances of customers affected by the upgrade. 

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“Those who were overcharged during the system upgrade should report to Kenya Power for redress. There was a period of transitioning from the old billing system to the new billing system resulting in a number of customers being affected. The customers are not the industrial category, they are not those on tokens. These are customers on old type of meters,” Mr Oimeke said.

Speaking at Royal Court Hotel in Mombasa during a consumer dialogue forum, he said ERC directed Kenya Power to amend bills of anyone complaining on tariffs and inflated bills due to the transition.

“As a result, if you have a contentious bill you should not be disconnected from power system until it is resolved. We have about 6.5 million consumers. About 900,000 were affected but some have been addressed,” he said urging other Kenyans to visit Kenya Power offices for redress. 

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Efficiency costs

The Director General said ERC has identified a way to address high costs of electricity.

He attributed the high cost of electricity in the country to systems losses due to movement of power from one point to another.

“There are losses, what I can call power theft in collusion with some of our employees who are not good. Some Kenyans who are using power bypass the meters and steal power. We have about 6.1 per cent non-technical losses,” Mr Oimeke explained.

He said the regulator is working on an innovative way to stop the theft, which has cost the company billions of shillings.

“The value of 6.1 per cent losses is actually billions of shillings. We want to ensure those billions are saved and given back to consumers in the form of reduced tariffs,” he said.

 He added: “Currently our system losses stands at about 18.9 per cent, most of which are technical. We want to eliminate the aspect of non-technical aspects which is 6.1 per cent. In essence we want to ensure that when we move power from generators to consumers we lose about 13 per cent not anymore.”

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New tariff

The director-general said ERC is working on a new tariff category that will promote the industrial consumers.

“It will be based on where we have cheap generation. When we publish our tariffs we will be having a category for newly gazetted industrial zones that will be very competitive to attract investments in those areas,” he said.

He added: “In overall, we expect a reduction in customer prices and significant reduction in commercial industrial category of users. We have also implemented the time of this tariffs where manufacturers enjoy a big discount from 10pm to 6pm. It was implemented in the last two months.”

Meanwhile, ERC announced it will ensure all companies dealing in petroleum employ more locals than expatriates.

Mr Oimeke urged Kenyans to pinpoint areas with discrepancies in terms of local representation. 

“We are pushing training of locals (Kenyans) to take over. There are some specialist jobs that we need expatriates which are very few.  We want bigger component of local representation. This is something that we are emphasising to our licensees,” he added.