Umeme’s managing director Selestino Babungi explained during an interaction with journalists that they witnessed the company’s daily energy sales drop by close to 30% in April as compared to average daily sales recorded in March. Umeme’s managing director Selestino Babungi addressing journalists. (Photo by Benon Ojiambo) ELECTRICITY INFRASTRUCTURE
Electricity consumption has been steadily recovering since the easing of lockdown started in May, distribution company Umeme has said.
Consumption of the utility had fallen sharply following the imposition of the lockdown to curtail the spread of coronavirus in March.
Umeme’s managing director Selestino Babungi explained during an interaction with journalists that they witnessed the company’s daily energy sales drop by close to 30% in April as compared to average daily sales recorded in March.
"For the first time, we saw our average daily electricity sales drop from 9.5 gigawatt-hours (GWh) per day recorded in February and March to 6.7GWh a day. This was a 29% reduction in demand," he said.
He also attributed the fall in consumption to the closing of factories that consume the majority of the power supplied and adjustment in people’s spending in tandem with their reduced earnings.
In May when the easing of lockdown started, we registered daily sales of 7.6GWh. 8.3GWh of electricity were sold averagely daily in June.
"As of July, we are registering 8.8GWh per day. This means that we are operating at around 90 percent of what we were selling before the lockdown. This is a reflection that the economy is responding to lockdown easing," Babungi said.
He further explained that lockdown imposition coincided with the rising water levels in Lakes Victoria and Kyoga as well as River Nile that affected their infrastructure.
"We had to switch off and transfer some of our infrastructure in the affected areas in pursuit of public health,"
No new connections Babungi also revealed that they were unable to connect new customers during the second quarter of the year due to observance of the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)."Most of our technicians ride on motorbikes, something they could not do because the President had banned travelling of two people on a motor bike. If we were to connect consumers, we had to double our fleet," he said.With the current installed capacity of 1,252MW and a peak demand of about 728MW, commissioning of Karuma project will mean that the country shall have unconsumed power in excess of 1,000MW.This, Babungi says, presents an opportunity for the sector […]