Government to Cut Back on Increasing Power Output Amidst Low Uptake

The government has announced plans to cut back on plans to increase countrywide power output by 2,800 megawatts amid low demand and uptake levels.

Energy CS Charles Keter has said that his ministry had come to the decision after analyzing demand forecasts.

Accordingly, the CS noted that the country plans on increasing its power production’s installed capacity to 7,200 megawatts (MW) by the year 2030, down from an initial target of 10,000MW.

This is because while increasing power production in the country sounds like an economically sound idea, too many power plants without users would be expensive to maintain.

Keter said that trends indicate that while the number of domestic power consumers had surged significantly over the last six years, industrial consumers have only grown marginally.

In a bid to curb these trends, the government is planning on taking different approaches to attract heavy power users, including giving incentives for investors setting up in industrial parks.

Currently, according to the Ministry of Energy, of the about 6.7 million power consumers in the country, more than six million are domestic whose use of power is low at about 10 units per month on average.

“If a household is paying about Sh200 a month, you find that the revenues would not be able to sustain the power industry,” said the CS.

With this, the CS said that the government is now, more than ever, focused on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to drive up demand and uptake of electricity.

When the Jubilee administration took up power in 2013, the president set a target of increasing the country’s power capacity to 6,765 megawatts in its first five-year term.

Six years later, the government has only added slightly below 700 megawatts since 2014 when the installed capacity stood at 2,094.9 megawatts.

The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics has reported that Kenya currently produces a power capacity of 2,711.7 megawatts on account of the 310 MW Lake Turkana Wind Power Projects and the 50-megawatt solar plant in Garissa, both commissioned in late 2018.

The current power output level reported by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics was mainly achieved due to the addition of the 310 MW Lake Turkana Wind Power Projects and the 50-megawatt solar plant in Garissa, both commissioned in late 2018.

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