Electricity bills may go up in Kenya from January

A storm is brewing in the energy sector that could see electricity bills go up from January next year. The Ministry of Energy and the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project (LTWP) are set to lock horns over lack of infrastructure to evacuate power from Marsabit to the national electricity grid.

This is after the wind farm threatened that it will start billing the Government as early as next month.

The move could see the cost passed on to consumers. LTWP has been building a wind farm in Marsabit and it said it is ready to start producing power as early as December.

There is, however, no infrastructure that would evacuate the power from the wind farm to the electricity grid.

This is due to delays in putting up the high capacity electricity transmission line between the site and Suswa, where it would connect to the grid.

The Government and LTWP had an agreement that provides for penalties should either of the parties fail to deliver their end of the bargain on time.

While the company said it is ready to start production of the first 102 megawatts by next month, the transmission line will not be ready until April next year.

It is against this background that LTWP is preparing to start billing the Government in January. The power plant was scheduled to start feeding electricity to the national grid in bits, with the entire 310MW expected on the grid by June 2017.

The Government is, however, not prepared to pay and said the delays in construction of the transmission line have been caused by factors that are beyond its control.

In an interview with Business Beat, Energy Principal Secretary Eng Joseph Njoroge said the agreement between the Government and the company provides for such eventualities and hence the Government will not be paying any amount to LTWP before it starts supplying electricity to the national grid.