Kenya Power offices on Aga Khan Walk in Nairobi.
Manyattas and bungalows lead in Kenyan households not connected to the national electricity grid, a new study shows, partly reflecting high connectivity costs and a growing trend where some homeowners opt for lamps or solar energy.
Contrastingly, nearly all apartments are connected to Kenya Power mains according to a survey by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).
The report shows that only 14.7 per cent of huts (1.38 million households) and 44.4 per cent of bungalows or 7.19 million households were connected to electricity. Despite the low uptake of electricity from the national grid, bungalows had the highest number of households.
Compound houses not sharing facilities had an 88.3 per cent uptake implying that 11.7 per cent did not have electricity. Swahili houses sharing facilities were 82.7 per cent connected to the main grid equivalent to 2.9 million households.
Maisonettes and town houses using electricity from Kenya Power followed at 91.6 per cent.
Some 98.6 per cent of apartments or 1.6 million households were connected to power because of their commercial and residential uses, as electricity is a major source of energy for lighting, heating, and cooling in these structures.
“Flats or apartments had the highest rate of connection to the main grid, with 98.6 per cent of units connected… A majority of bungalows lacked electricity with 55.6 per cent of units not connected, while 44.4 per cent had electricity,” said KNBS.
Close to half (47 per cent) of households surveyed reported that the long distance to the nearest power pole is the reason they are not connected.
“This indicates a significant gap in the infrastructure and distribution of the main grid electricity network,” said KNBS.
“Approximately one third (31.6 per cent) of the households cited financial constraints as the main barrier to obtaining a connection, suggesting that the initial costs associated with setting up a connection are prohibitively high for many households.”
According to Kenya Power, it has since 2015 implemented the Last Mile Connectivity Project connecting a total of 746,867 customers under Phases I, II, and III.
The company said it started Phase V, targeting 11,000 customers in Nakuru, Nyandarua, Kilifi, and Kwale counties.
This phase is funded by a Sh1.9 billion grant from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
In the year ended June 2024, the listed energy distributor connected 447,251 new customers to the grid against a target of 400,000 customers, surpassing the connectivity target for the year by 12 per cent. Kenya Power aims to connect an additional four million customers by 2030.
A rising number of corporate and household consumers are turning to captive power plants which generate electricity primarily for own consumption.
Data by the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) shows that the captive power capacity in the country stood at 532.6 megawatts (MW) or 14.88 percent of Kenya’s installed capacity as of the end of June 2024. The figure stood at 280.76MW as of December 2022.
Of the 532.6 MW, solar contributed 229.2 MW followed by biomass (161.8 MW), waste heat recovery cycle (83.5 MW), hydro (33 MW), thermal (21.3 MW), and geothermal at 3.7 MW.
