4Kenya Power has reduced the number of times its customers are left in the dark by half in the last four years thanks to its billions of investments on its electricity distribution infrastructure.
The Ministry of Energy says the average time consumers stay without power supply per month has reduced from four in 2016 to one hour, 40 minutes in 2020.
According to the ministry, the response time to outages has improved with the average time consumers are left in the dark to fix power lines that have reduced from seven to four hours during the same period.
Energy Cabinet Secretary Charles Keter noted that although significant had been done to improve the reliability of power supply, more still needed to be done going forward.
“Our aim in the energy sector is not just to provide power but to ensure that the power which we provide to Kenyans is reliable, affordable, and of quality. We have invested in measures to reduce power outages and we want in the next few years to have a utility that assures its customers of reliable power. We are not yet there, though,” the CS said.
The power distributor is said to have invested around Sh70 billion in improving its distribution infrastructure by establishing more substations and undergrounding power lines to reduce interference.
Kenya Power also procured specially customized trucks used to repair electricity lines without cutting off the power supply.
The upgraded that enabled cities like Nairobi to have alternative power supply lines that keep homes and businesses connected whenever one line developed an issue.
A study conducted in 2017 on electricity reliability in Kenya revealed that Kenya’s power was losing more than Sh2 billion annually from power outages.
The study concluded that most outages were caused by faults with just a few being planned by Kenya Power.
Reduced outage periods are a key revenue boost for the utility service provider and are used to measure Kenya’s ease of doing business through a quality power supply.
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