Close to one million Kenyan homes illegally connected to power
Close to one million Kenyan homes are illegally connected to power leading to massive system losses that cost Kenya Power billions
Close to one million Kenyan homes are illegally connected to power leading to massive system losses that cost Kenya Power billions.
According to an analysis of official data, an estimated 680,000 Kenyan homes may have been illegally connected to the national grid in 2019, resulting in massive system losses that cost Kenya Power billions.
According to a new report from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), there is a 678,684 difference between the number of people who said they were connected during the 2019 census and the official figures provided by power distributor Kenya Power on domestic connections that same year.
According to KNBS data, 6,069,680 households, or 50.4 percent, were connected to mains electricity, a higher figure than the 5,390,396 reported by the State-owned firm the same year.
Illegal power connections are one of the causes of system losses that the power distributor recovers by passing on the cost to consumers, pushing up the cost of power.
“These losses contribute to high power charges to the consumers since the industry regulator allows the company to charge up to 19.9 percent of the power losses to consumers,” Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu said about Kenya Power’s accounts.
Kenya power loses about 20 percent in revenues from fraud and illegal connections.
In the year ended June 2021, consumers paid Sh20.1 billion to the utility firm for electricity theft and leakages from an aging transmission network.
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According to Kenya Power, high system losses are the result of technical and commercial factors resulting from the expanded transmission and distribution network, as well as increased electricity pilferage.
The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) allowed Kenya Power to recover system losses equivalent to 19.9% of the units it buys from generators in July 2020, up from 14.9% previously.
This saw consumers pay an extra Sh5.06 billion, pushing their total cost burden for electricity theft and leakages to Sh20.1 billion based on system losses of 24.14 percent for the year to June.
Kenya Power bought 12,131 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in the review period but only sold 9,203 GWh or 75.86 percent of the units.
This means that 2,928GWh or 24.14 percent of the units were lost.
The company, however, billed consumers for 2,414 GWh out of the lost units, resulting in a charge of Sh20.1 billion under the 19.9 percent system loss recovery margin.
System losses are the difference between the total amount of energy procured and sold. It has technical and commercial losses.
Technical losses occur when electrical energy is dissipated in the process of transmission and distribution while the commercial type is mainly attributed to pilferages, faulty meters, and meter tampering.
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