The Kenyan Government has abandoned its 2013 ambitious plan aimed at increasing the country’s installed electricity generating capacity by 5,000 megawatts to 6,600MW supposed to be completed by 2016.
According to Citizen TV, the govt’ noted that demand from large consumers had slowed down and also wants to avoid racking up expensive loans.
Kenya’s Energy and Petroleum Cabinet Secretary Charles Keter said that they are currently monitoring the situation as they plan to engage manufacturers to scale up production hence increase electricity production.
“You can get up to 10,000MW, but if we are only doing 1,600MW then it becomes very expensive because for most of these projects we take loans. What we are doing is to monitor the demand,” Mr Keter said.
Kenya has an installed capacity of 2,294 megawatts with a peak demand of 1,600 megawatts.
Mr Keter said funds will be channeled towards increasing demand as well as stabilizing transmission to eradicate power outages.
“That is one element that is making the cost of power high. Whether you have demand or not you have to run the machines but that is being addressed,” he said.
Citizen TV
