Kenya Power to Invest $2 Million Towards Promotion of Electric Mobility

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The Kenya Power and Lighting Company Plc (Kenya Power) is Kenya’s electric utility company. Kenya Power is the main offtaker of power produced by both national and independent power producers. Kenya Power then transmits, distributes, and retails the power to customers throughout Kenya. As of December 2023, the company had over 9.5 million customers and had enabled over 76% of the country’s population to access the national grid. As a major stakeholder in the electricity sector, Kenya Power has been at the forefront of promoting the adoption of electric mobility in Kenya. Kenya Power is now ramping up its activities in the electric  mobility space.

Kenya Power has just announced that it will invest up to KShs 258 million (~$2 million USD) in the next three years to drive the uptake of electric vehicles in the country. The money will go towards the cost of setting up charging stations at various locations across the country and the purchase of electric vehicles and motorbikes for its own internal operations.

Kenya Power has already set up some charging stations, which can also be accessed by the general public as well as its own fleet. This week, Kenya Power launched a DC charging station at Stima Plaza, which has been set up at a cost of KShs 6.5 million (~$50,000 USD). The charging station comprises two chargers: a 50 kW DC charger and a 22 kW AC charger. It is the second EV charging station that is owned by Kenya Power after a similar one went up that is located at the Ruaraka Depot which hosts the company’s transport section.

The two electric vehicle (EV) chargers, the one at Stima Plaza and the other at Ruaraka, will be open for free use by members of the public who own EVs, primarily to assist the company in its research and development. An RFID card for charging will be required, which can be obtained at the Kenya Power security desk at Stima Plaza and Ruaraka. Kenya Power adds that over the last three years, approximately 90% of the electricity dispatched to the grid comprises clean energy from renewable sources — these include hydro, geothermal, solar, and wind. This rises to 100% during most of the off-peak hours at night, which makes the charging of EVs more environmentally friendly at this time.

“The future of transport in electric and as a Company, we are extremely excited to be leading the conversations around E-mobility. Alongside our need to charge our electric vehicles, we intend to use our EV charging stations to collect data that will inform the next steps of our support to the growing E-mobility industry,” said Kenya Power’s Managing Director & CEO, Dr. (Eng.) Joseph Siror.

Kenya Power will continue with its rollout of electric vehicle charging stations with a further nine locations in the pipeline for Q2 2024. By the end of July 2024, chargers will be installed at various Kenya Power offices across the country, including: Donholm, Nakuru, Mombasa, Mtito Andei, Kisumu, Eldoret, Roysambu, Electricity House Nairobi, and Ragati.

“We have set aside an annual budget of KShs 20 million to set up EV charging stations at all our offices across the country. Beyond the additional charging stations that we intend to put up in the current financial year, we intend to install 10 additional facilities annually in 2025 and 2026,” said Dr. (Eng) Siror.

Kenya Power is also ramping up the acquisition of electric vehicles for its own internal operations. Kenya Power has recently acquired two electric heavy-duty vehicles that will be deployed for routine operations. The vehicles were purchased at a cost of KShs 18 million (~$135,000 USD). Kenya Power intends to scale the number of electric vehicles in its fleet through the purchase of an additional 9 electric vehicles (heavy and light duty) and 25 electric motorcycles by the end of December 2024. In 2021, Kenya Power completed the pilot of 13 electric motorcycles in its fleet in partnership with UNEP, an exercise that the utility company said offered invaluable lessons on e-mobility. Before this exercise, the company piloted the use of electric-powered forklifts and pallet stackers at its warehouses for two years between the year 2016 and 2018.

Kenya Power has also started  implementing the e-mobility tariff that was approved by the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority during the recent electricity tariff review as part of its initiatives to drive the uptake of electric vehicles, motorcycles, and bicycles. The new e-mobility tariff has been set at 16 Kenya shillings for energy consumption up to 15,000 kWh during peak periods and 8 Kenya shillings per kWh during off-peak periods also up to 15,000 kWh. 16 Kenya shillings works out to 13 US cents/kWh at the current exchange rate. This is before taxes and other charges are added to the final cost the consumers will pay. This also means the tariff under the TOU program will be just 6 US cents/kWh. The 16 shillings is lower than the general domestic tariff, which is 20.97 shillings per kWh for consumption above 100 kWh and the small commercial tariff which has been set at 20.18 shillings/kWh for consumption above 100 kWh. The e-mobility tariff is also fixed until 2025/2026.

Kenya has a high fossil fuel import bill that is now said to be about $500 million per month and is exacerbating Kenya’s trade deficit. This new e-mobility tariff as well as the new TOU program for the small commercial categories, which has been set at 50% of the energy charge, will help boost uptake of e-mobility. The good news is that we can now start to track consumption from the electric mobility sector from the aggregation of data from those that have signed up for the special electric mobility tariff. The EPRA report says that 5,205.79 GWh were consumed by all the major sectors over the period. 2,706.62 GWh of electrical energy were consumed by large commercial and industrial customers, accounting for 51.99% of total consumption. Domestic consumers were the second largest group, consuming 1,599.33 GWh, which is about 30.72% of total energy consumption. Small commercial enterprises were next, utilizing 843.04 GWh, or 16.19% of overall electrical consumption during the period under review. Street lighting was next, with consumption of 56.48 GWh of electrical energy, which works out to about 1.09% of the total energy consumption.

A welcome new entrant on the consumption charts was electric mobility! During the period under review, 0.32 GWh was consumed by electric vehicles, which is close to 0.01% of total energy consumption. This consumption is probably from commercial operations like charging of electric buses as well as powering battery charging and swapping centres for the nascent electric motorcycle sector. The actual consumption could be a bit higher considering the fact there are probably quite a few private electric vehicle owners as well as corporate fleets that have not yet switched to meters on the dedicated electric mobility tariffs platform, and therefore their consumption is not included in the data.

To further accelerate the uptake of e-mobility, Kenya Power has championed the annual E-mobility Conference that brings together players in the industry to deliberate on a framework that will promote the growth of the sector. The E-mobility Conference kicks-off this week in Nairobi.

Images courtesy of Kenya Power