Institutions require a measure of rules and guidelines to maintain order and steer growth. It is no different even in the energy sector. While churches have the Bible, countries have the constitution, the energy sector in Kenya has the Least Cost Power Development Plan (LCPD).
The plan forecasts and guides the onboarding of power plants, influences pricing and dispatch to ensure the cheapest plants are utilised first, projects demand and informs a pipeline of power projects to meet the same.
This plan is, however, not always adhered to and frequently meddled with, leaving the sector to be run on deals and prioritising projects based on the I-know-a-guy approach.
In 2018, the then regime slammed the breaks on procurement under the LCPDP, halting any power project development in Kenya. One enquiry after another. While the call to look into the cost of power was and still is just and right, this opened the sector to political interference, which continues across regimes.
A decade later, Kenya’s reserve margin is way below the global standard of 15 percent. Despite calls and warnings from different stakeholders in the sector over several years, this went on.
Earlier this year, it was reported that the President admitted Kenya’s electricity supply is insufficient to meet demand and that load shedding was happening daily between 5pm and 10pm.
True to it, we continue to import 200 megawatts from Ethiopia and will add 200 megawatts. We are also drawing more power from Uganda than before. It is a good thing that we have well abled neighbours to supply us power at our time of need.
However, this should also be a wake-up call to us to think around self-sufficiency and self-supply.
Despite an existing pipeline of projects that could power the country and make us self-sufficient, Kenya Power recently announced that they are in advanced stages of procuring an emergency powerplant at the Coast.
When people refuse to plan – or in this case, ignore and frustrate the plan – they most certainly are planning to fail.
A decade was enough time to build and commission power plants. It was long enough time to keep up with demand growth and maintain the reserve margin.
Kenya is growing, demand continues to rise, it is only prudent that the quest for cheaper power is followed by actions that lead to that.
Ignoring the sector manual will only keep us in the never-ending cycle of blame games and near crisis, making the goal to getting cheaper power a faraway dream.
The writer is Head of Programmes and Communications at the Electricity Sector Association of Kenya.
