Kenya Power to cut bills by 10%

Electricity distribution company Kenya Power said on Thursday it would reduce power tariffs by 10 per cent by the end of the year, but warned that plan could change depending on whether energy prices kept dropping. The Energy Regulatory Commission has cut the maximum price of a litre of diesel by almost 8 percent after crude oil prices fell in global markets.

Increased water volumes in major dams due to high rainfall since April are also helping towards a cut in power tariffs, Kenya Power's manager in charge of distribution told reporters in Mombasa. "The electricity bill has a variable element of fuel costs which goes up and comes down depending on the fuel used and its cost. The reduction in pump prices means lesser expenses for us," Benson Muriithi said. "It will only be fair to reduce the burden on our customers too, but that's only if the reduction is consistent, and does not fluctuate as it has been," said Muriithi. "We have had substantial rainfall as well, and so the prices of the fuel component have gone down since we have used less diesel and more hydro(power)," he said.

Kenya Power supplies 1,250 megawatts of power to the national grid, against demand of 1,700 megawatts, a deficit of 450 MW that the distributor says can be partly overcome by using green energy. The firm has said it was exploring alternative energy sources like geothermal, wind and solar as it gears towards achieving enough power to run 14 electric trains within east Africa and an international trade centre in Mombasa by 2030. The distributor has seen its customer base grow from 730,000 in 2005 to 2.1 million this year.