Epra plans to limit Kenya Power blackout to 20 a year per customer
A dark Kisumu street in a past power blackout. Epra proposes to limit the number of times a customer is hit by a blackout to 20 in a year.
What you need to know:
- Kenya Power under pressure to upgrade its ageing infrastructure and cut reconnection times during unplanned outages.
- Epra proposes to limit the number of times a customer is hit by a blackout to 20 in a year.
Electricity distributor Kenya Power faces pressure to upgrade its ageing infrastructure and cut reconnection times during unplanned outages under new proposals by the energy sector regulator.
In a drastic shift, the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) proposes to limit the System Average Interruption Frequency Indicator (SAIFI) – the number of times a customer is hit by a blackout – to 20 in a year.
SAIFI is measured in units of interruptions per customer. It is usually measured over a year, according to the median value for North American utilities --approximately 1.10 interruptions per customer.
“The proposed code is about improving service delivery by the power utility company. There have to be benchmarks in service delivery,” said an official at Epra.
The new rule spells an uphill task for Kenya Power given its poor track record characterised by the high number of unplanned electricity outages.
For instance, official Kenya Power records showed that its customers were hit with an average of 44.9 unplanned blackouts in the year to June 2023.
To minimise the length of blackouts, the proposed Epra service code further restricts the cumulative duration of unplanned power outages - System Average Interruption Duration Indicator (SAIDI) - to 80 hours per year.
The SAIDI index is the average total duration of outages (in hours) experienced by a customer in a year.
The target set by Epra would mark a significant shift going by the current situation where customers stay in the dark for about 115.73 hours annually.
Further, to ensure that unplanned blackouts last as briefly as possible, the code has restricted the duration of each blackout - Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI) - to a maximum of four hours.
If achieved, this will be an improvement from the current average duration of four hours and 52 minutes for each blackout.
However, the rules do not apply to power outages that are planned. Kenya Power regularly schedules power outages to undertake maintenance works and network upgrades to specific areas in a day.
