Energy PS Joseph Njoroge said the SMEs were left out of the lower tariff for power use between 10pm and 6am because they do not have smart meters, which Kenya Power will install in three months.
The Energy ministry plans to extend discounted night-time electricity tariff, which took effect for industrial and commercial consumers on Friday, to the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the first quarter of next year.
Energy PS Joseph Njoroge said the SMEs were left out of the lower tariff for power use between 10pm and 6am because they do not have smart meters, which Kenya Power #ticker:KPLC will install in three months.
Under the new cheaper tariff plan, commercial consumers metered at above 11 kilovolts (kV) are charged Sh5 per kilowatt hour (kWh) from Sh7.50 per unit, while those metered at between 450 volts to 11kV are paying Sh7 per unit from Sh9.20.
“We want to move to next category, which is SMEs. The only setback we have is the meters because for you to have off-peak and on-peak (tariff), you must have a smart meter which is able to sense and register consumption and the time of that consumption,” Eng Njoroge told reporters on the sidelines of Kenya Power’s annual General Meeting in Nairobi on Friday.
The lower tariff applies to large firms, which will increase production at night over and above their present capacity during the day in a deliberate move by the government to prevent manufacturing from shifting all their production lines to off-peak time.
“We already know how many units these customers consume and we expect them to consume the same number of units.”
