In East Africa, residents of Naivasha Town in the north-west of Kenya will soon see an improvement in the power supply following a $474,139 power equipment and network upgrade.
The refurbishment project will be carried out by state-run power company Kenya Power.
Kenya Power’s managing director and CEO, Ben Chumo, said that the project forms part of the second phase of a countrywide refurbishment project, dubbed ”Boresha Umeme”, which involves conducting master repair works at existing substations and upgrading power lines.
Upgrading the electricity network
Chumo said: “We are currently serving a customer base of 37,685 and we want to work towards growing that number as we upgrade our supply network and accelerate connectivity and
electricity access to Kenyans.”
He added that the utility is making every effort to ensure that the maintenance repair work is completed in the shortest time possible “to allow residents [to] enjoy better quality of power, which includes reduced power outages that are sometimes caused by operational and system maintenance works.”
According to a company statement, the maintenance team will be upgrading 38 substations, which service Naivasha and Gilgil residents.
Chumo added: “This refurbishment exercise will stabilise power reliability and, ultimately, reduce power outages which have been experienced in these areas due to overloaded transformers brought about by the growing demand for electricity.”
By improving electricity supply, the utility aims to expand access to over 70% of the national population by 2017.
Extending power projects
In addition to the electricity network upgrade, Kenya Power has launched a street lighting project in Old Town, Mombasa.
The initial roll out of the project in Mombasa’s Old Town is estimated to cost $427,411 and will include the retrofitting of 500 existing High Pressure Sodium (HSP) lamps to Light Emitting Diode (LED) lamps.
Speaking at the launch on Tuesday, Chumo said: "Mombasa is the second city we are going to light up after Nairobi where we have completed the refurbishment of public lighting in 369 streets as well as the installation of 121 high masts in high-population settlements such as Mathare, Korogocho, and Mukuru at a total cost of Shs.953 million.”