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

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The Kenya Energy and Lighting Firm Plc (Kenya Energy) is Kenya’s electrical utility firm. Kenya Energy is the principle offtaker of energy produced by each nationwide and impartial energy producers. Kenya Energy then transmits, distributes, and retails the facility to prospects all through Kenya. As of December 2023, the corporate had over 9.5 million prospects and had enabled over 76% of the nation’s inhabitants to entry the nationwide grid. As a serious stakeholder within the electrical energy sector, Kenya Energy has been on the forefront of selling the adoption of electrical mobility in Kenya. Kenya Energy is now ramping up its actions within the electrical  mobility area.

Kenya Energy has simply introduced that it’ll make investments as much as KShs 258 million (~$2 million USD) within the subsequent three years to drive the uptake of electrical autos within the nation. The cash will go in direction of the price of establishing charging stations at numerous areas throughout the nation and the acquisition of electrical autos and motorbikes for its personal inside operations.

Kenya Energy has already arrange some charging stations, which will also be accessed by most of the people in addition to its personal fleet. This week, Kenya Energy launched a DC charging station at Stima Plaza, which has been arrange at a price of KShs 6.5 million (~$50,000 USD). The charging station contains two chargers: a 50 kW DC charger and a 22 kW AC charger. It’s the second EV charging station that’s owned by Kenya Energy after an analogous one went up that’s situated on the Ruaraka Depot which hosts the corporate’s transport part.

The 2 electrical automobile (EV) chargers, the one at Stima Plaza and the opposite at Ruaraka, can be open totally free use by members of the general public who personal EVs, primarily to help the corporate in its analysis and improvement. An RFID card for charging can be required, which might be obtained on the Kenya Energy safety desk at Stima Plaza and Ruaraka. Kenya Energy provides that during the last three years, roughly 90% of the electrical energy dispatched to the grid contains clear power from renewable sources — these embrace hydro, geothermal, photo voltaic, and wind. This rises to 100% throughout a lot of the off-peak hours at evening, which makes the charging of EVs extra environmentally pleasant at the moment.

“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,” mentioned Kenya Energy’s Managing Director & CEO, Dr. (Eng.) Joseph Siror.

Kenya Energy will proceed with its rollout of electrical automobile charging stations with an additional 9 areas within the pipeline for Q2 2024. By the tip of July 2024, chargers can be put in at numerous Kenya Energy workplaces throughout the nation, together with: Donholm, Nakuru, Mombasa, Mtito Andei, Kisumu, Eldoret, Roysambu, Electrical energy Home 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,” mentioned Dr. (Eng) Siror.

Kenya Energy can be ramping up the acquisition of electrical autos for its personal inside operations. Kenya Energy has not too long ago acquired two electrical heavy-duty autos that can be deployed for routine operations. The autos had been bought at a price of KShs 18 million (~$135,000 USD). Kenya Energy intends to scale the variety of electrical autos in its fleet by the acquisition of a further 9 electrical autos (heavy and lightweight responsibility) and 25 electrical bikes by the tip of December 2024. In 2021, Kenya Energy accomplished the pilot of 13 electrical bikes in its fleet in partnership with UNEP, an train that the utility firm mentioned supplied invaluable classes on e-mobility. Earlier than this train, the corporate piloted using electric-powered forklifts and pallet stackers at its warehouses for 2 years between the 12 months 2016 and 2018.

Kenya Energy has additionally began  implementing the e-mobility tariff that was authorized by the Vitality and Petroleum Regulatory Authority throughout the latest electrical energy tariff assessment as a part of its initiatives to drive the uptake of electrical autos, bikes, and bicycles. The brand new e-mobility tariff has been set at 16 Kenya shillings for power consumption as much as 15,000 kWh throughout peak intervals and eight Kenya shillings per kWh throughout off-peak intervals additionally as much as 15,000 kWh. 16 Kenya shillings works out to 13 US cents/kWh on the present trade fee. That is earlier than taxes and different prices are added to the ultimate value the customers can pay. This additionally means the tariff beneath the TOU program can be simply 6 US cents/kWh. The 16 shillings is decrease than the final home tariff, which is 20.97 shillings per kWh for consumption above 100 kWh and the small industrial tariff which has been set at 20.18 shillings/kWh for consumption above 100 kWh. The e-mobility tariff can be mounted till 2025/2026.

Kenya has a excessive fossil gasoline import invoice that’s now mentioned to be about $500 million per 30 days and is exacerbating Kenya’s commerce deficit. This new e-mobility tariff in addition to the brand new TOU program for the small industrial classes, which has been set at 50% of the power cost, will assist enhance uptake of e-mobility. The excellent news is that we will now begin to monitor consumption from the electrical mobility sector from the aggregation of information from people who have signed up for the particular electrical mobility tariff. The EPRA report says that 5,205.79 GWh had been consumed by all the main sectors over the interval. 2,706.62 GWh {of electrical} power had been consumed by giant industrial and industrial prospects, accounting for 51.99% of complete consumption. Home customers had been the second largest group, consuming 1,599.33 GWh, which is about 30.72% of complete power consumption. Small industrial enterprises had been subsequent, using 843.04 GWh, or 16.19% of general electrical consumption throughout the interval beneath assessment. Road lighting was subsequent, with consumption of 56.48 GWh {of electrical} power, which works out to about 1.09% of the entire power consumption.

A welcome new entrant on the consumption charts was electrical mobility! Throughout the interval beneath assessment, 0.32 GWh was consumed by electrical autos, which is near 0.01% of complete power consumption. This consumption might be from industrial operations like charging of electrical buses in addition to powering battery charging and swapping centres for the nascent electrical motorbike sector. The precise consumption may very well be a bit greater contemplating the very fact there are in all probability fairly a number of personal electrical automobile house owners in addition to company fleets that haven’t but switched to meters on the devoted electrical mobility tariffs platform, and subsequently their consumption isn’t included within the information.

To additional speed up the uptake of e-mobility, Kenya Energy has championed the annual E-mobility Convention that brings collectively gamers within the trade to deliberate on a framework that may promote the expansion of the sector. The E-mobility Convention kicks-off this week in Nairobi.

Photographs courtesy of Kenya Energy