Government has embarked on an 18-month, Shs10.5b project to develop a national electricity distribution master plan aimed at guiding network expansion, reducing connection costs and supporting government’s ambition to achieve universal access by 2030.
The plan will provide a comprehensive picture of the country’s existing electricity distribution infrastructure and identify areas requiring new connections, upgrades and alternative energy solutions.
Under government’s 2030 target, half of the population will access electricity through the national grid, while the other half will be connected through off-grid solutions, particularly solar systems.
Ministry of Energy commissioner for rural electrification Abdon Atwine said the project seeks to address weaknesses in the current approach to electricity planning, which largely focuses on taking power to districts and sub-counties.
He said the absence of integrated planning has sometimes resulted in public facilities being established far from existing electricity infrastructure, creating expensive demands for grid extensions.
‘That is something we want to address by working with our stakeholders … to have a robust plan in terms of upgrading our network and extending the grid,’ Atwine said in an interview.
The master plan is expected to bring together electricity infrastructure planning and the development priorities of other government ministries, helping ensure that new public facilities and investments are considered when decisions on network expansion are made.
‘It is a study that will take us 18 months, for Shs10.5b … after 18 months, we should be a harmonised sector,’ he said.
Turkish technology firm Basarsoft has been contracted to undertake the studies, including mapping the electricity distribution network using Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
The exercise will involve collecting data on existing electricity infrastructure, identifying underserved communities and assessing potential demand to inform future investment decisions.
Basarsoft General Manager Tuncay Kucukpehlivan said the use of GIS would provide government with a reliable and continuously updated database to support electricity planning.
‘We are trying to establish a GIS database by studying all the fields and visiting all villages. We will collect existing infrastructure and potential demands. In this way, we will see the existing system and the demands for the future,’ he said.
The company plans to deploy about 200 field staff to undertake the surveys, which have already started.
The field exercise, Kucukpehlivan said, is expected to cover targeted areas within six months, followed by approximately three months of data evaluation.
The findings will then be used to develop the master plan, with outputs produced progressively across different regions rather than waiting for the entire countrywide exercise to be completed.
He said the process would also allow the Ministry of Energy to access data as it is collected, enabling it to monitor progress and understand emerging findings.
‘There will be regions to be covered; as the data comes, we will open that data also to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development to see what’s going on, and after evaluating the data, we start producing the outcomes,’ he said.
The resulting master plan is expected to provide a basis for prioritising electricity investments, coordinating network expansion with public infrastructure development and identifying where grid connections or off-grid solutions would be more appropriate.