Kenya Power acquires 140,000 transformers as it moves to address backlog in 2 months

Kenya Power Managing Director Engineer Joseph Siror who appeared before the National Assembly Energy Committee says they have cleared almost half of the 320,000 transformer backlog and the rest will be cleared within two months.

He said the backlog which stands at 320,000 is being addressed with 140,000 new transformers acquired and customers who have been waiting for the last two years connected. 

Kenya Power has also revealed that it is owed over Ksh.26 billion, which if recovered will enable the company to sort out some of its challenges.

“As of the time we were procuring we had pending connections of about 240,000 these are connections of overtime and we had about 90,000 faulty meters all these needed to be done like yesterday and this does not include new applications that are coming each and every other day, so we are really in a position where we are fastracking this,” Siror said.

Siror who blamed the backlog on court cases says they have won the six cases that had been filed hindering procurement of transformers.

“Even our latest attempt which we did in May again faced a lot of litigation this time around we put in a very spirited attempt so it went fast, and they lost the case,” the MD explained.

The company which posted a Ksh.3.2 billion net loss for the full year ended 30th June, 2023 has also attributed its poor performance to debt owed.

“Kenya Power has been used sometimes as a social company to do projects that are not paid for so today Kenya Power is owed Ksh.26 billion the kind of money if they had at their disposal they could buy all the transformers, all the conductors and sort the challenge of power loses,” Energy Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir noted.

Chirchir says they have put plans in place to reduce cases of power loss that have been experienced in the country.

“We are working on power loss trying to bring the power losses from the high of 22.9% to about 16% both technical commercial and we have those deliverable associated with certain timelines,” Chirchir added.

Kenya Power has also defended their move to relocate transformers from one area to the other saying the transfer only happens when inspectors discover the transformers are put in areas where they had not been allocated.