Kenya Energy employees perform restore works alongside Haile Selassie Highway, Mombasa. FILE PHOTO | KEVIN ODIT | NMG
Electrical energy distributor Kenya Energy faces strain to improve its ageing infrastructure and increase effectivity in reconnections throughout outages after the power sector regulator capped the permissible variety of unplanned blackouts in new proposed modifications aimed toward enhancing service supply.
In a drastic shift, the Power and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) proposes to restrict the System Common Interruption Frequency Indicator (SAIFI) – the variety of occasions a median buyer is hit by a blackout – to twenty in a yr.
SAIFI is measured in models of interruptions per buyer. It’s often measured over a yr, in response to the median worth for North American utilities –approximately 1.10 interruptions per buyer.
“The proposed code is about enhancing service supply by the facility utility firm. There should be benchmarks in service supply,” an official at Epra stated.
The brand new rule spells an uphill activity for Kenya Energy given its poor observe file characterised by the excessive variety of unplanned electrical energy outages. As an illustration, official Kenya Energy data confirmed that its clients have been hit with a median of 44.9 unplanned blackouts within the yr to June 2023.
To minimise the size of blackouts, the proposed Epra service code additional restricts the cumulative length of unplanned energy outages – System Common Interruption Period Indicator (SAIDI) – to 80 hours per yr.
The SAIDI index is the typical complete length of outages (in hours) skilled by a buyer in a yr.
The goal set by Epra would mark a major shift going by the present scenario the place clients keep in the dead of night for about 115.73 hours yearly. Additional, to make sure that unplanned blackouts final as briefly as doable, the code has restricted the length of every blackout – Buyer Common Interruption Period Index (CAIDI) – to a most of 4 hours.
If achieved, this shall be an enchancment from the present common length of 4 hours and 52 minutes for every blackout.
Nevertheless, the principles don’t apply to energy outages which can be deliberate.
Kenya Energy often schedules energy outages to undertake upkeep works and community upgrades to particular areas in a day.
These new targets should be achieved by Kenya Energy inside the first yr of the distribution code being adopted till the fifth yr.
After 5 years, the targets shall be additional improved to a most of 15 unplanned blackouts every year, 45 hours of unplanned outages yearly, and a most length of simply three hours per outage.
These requirements will even be utilized to new energy distributors that can be part of the market to compete with Kenya Energy following the opening up of the native power distribution market.
The code has additional given Epra energy to effective companies that don’t meet the set requirements.
“The quantity of the penalty shall be decided by the authority relying on the sort and the extent of non-compliance,” says the code.
The brand new guidelines come at a time when Kenyans have been on the receiving finish of frequent energy outages, a few of which have been nationwide, resulting in disruption of enterprise actions.
Kenyans have been hit with a nationwide energy blackout in December which was the third in as many months. There was a rising push from the companies that incur monetary losses as a consequence of energy outages to be compensated by Kenya Energy. Nevertheless the laws to compel the facility utility to compensate customers for monetary losses, tools injury, bodily accidents and dying as a consequence of energy outages are but to be operationalised. Kenya Energy provides compensation for accidents and broken kits however doesn’t compensate home and enterprise clients for monetary loss ensuing from being left with out electrical energy.
