KPLC CEO Joseph Siror on why electricity costs are high

Chief Executive Officer of Kenya Power Joseph Siror has provided insight into the technicalities behind the high cost of power.
The country’s poor rainfall and low dam levels, Siror claimed in an interview with Spice FM on Tuesday, 15 August, have restricted the amount of power that can be dispatched from hydroelectric plants, which are the cheapest form of electricity.
He made this declaration as the nation’s electricity prices reached an all-time high.
According to the most recent statistics from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), the average cost of 50 kWh of power climbed from KSh796.83 in August of last year to a mean of KSh1,326.54 at the end of May this year.
Siror said whenever there is a shortfall, the diesel generators, which are more expensive, have to fill the gap.
“Whenever there is that shortfall, what mainly comes in to fill that gap are the diesel generators, which means it will keep varying from month to month based on how much hydro was dispatched in that particular month to meet the requirements,” he said.
He continued by describing how some stations use thermoelectric generators, which run entirely on diesel. The end consumers, who are charged for the power that reaches them, are also subject to transmission and distribution losses, he continued.
“The moment you generate power and you transmit, there are transmission losses. The moment you distribute, there will always be distribution losses, so what eventually becomes available to be sold is what reaches the end user and that is what is billed to the customer,” he explained.
According to the recently appointed Kenya Power CEO, the tariff that is passed on to the consumer today is a total of all the costs associated with the energy sector, including the cost of production, transmission, distribution, and retailing, as well as some levies to support some of the agencies involved in the energy sector.
In Kenya, he continued, electricity consumption ranges from low to high depending on the time of day and the season. Independent electricity Producers (IPPs) were brought in to meet the demand and growing population, he said.
“When you look at the power consumption in Kenya, there is a curve; like for example today if i was to communicate with national control, we may be consuming around 1600 megawatts but by 9:00am we may actually have gone to around 2000 megawatts.”he said.
“There is a curve that varies from low to highs and then from around 10pm it drops to around 1500 megawatts and then by midnight we are again back to around 1000 megawatts and that is how the power curve is,” he added.
They might not need to send out the more expensive sources when the demand for power is lower since they can satisfy it by sending out the cheaper ones. However, they must inject the more expensive ones when demand is at its highest to prevent load shedding.
“If there is a way we can encourage more power usage especially during off-peaks, it would be possible to mitigate against the cost.” he added.
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