Kenya’s power utility company, Kenya Power, has increased its customers by connecting 256,206 new customers to the national grid during the second half of 2023.
This represents 13.87 per cent against a half-year target of 225,000 customers.
“The new customer connections increased the total customer base to 9,454,819 customers,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday, February 20, 2024.
According to Kenya Power, the accelerated connectivity was driven by the availability of meters and the deployment of the Rapid Results Initiative (RRI) which is meant to fast-track meter installation for new connections across the country.
The company explained that at the beginning of October 2023 when the Rapid Results Initiative was launched, the total pending new connections stood at 236,924.
It said the backlog resulted from protracted court battles that hindered procurement of meters and other materials.
“Following the improvement in meter availability, we recently initiated a metering initiative to accelerate connections.
We have exceeded our target for the half-year period and we are on course towards the attainment of our annual target, which will positively impact the journey towards universal access to electricity by the year 2030,” Dr Joseph Siror, Kenya Power’s Managing Director & CEO, said.
The company targets to connect 400,000 new customers to the national grid by the end of 2024.
To attain universal access to electricity, the company would sustain the connectivity drive, with an additional four million customers targeted to be connected by the year 2030.
Apart from the RRI, the company is also banking on the implementation of other projects such as the Last Mile Connectivity Project (LMCP) to achieve its annual connectivity targets.
So far 1,431,423 customers have been connected to the grid through the Last Mile Connectivity Project which is funded by the Government of Kenya and development partners including; the World Bank, African Development Bank (AfDB), AFD, European Union (EU), European Investment Bank (EIB) and JICA.
Preparations are ongoing for the rollout of Phase ‘4’ of the Last Mile Connectivity Project which is financed by AFD/EU and EIB.
The project targets to connect 280,000 customers across 32 counties within eighteen months.
Source:https://energynewsafrica.com
