Media Kit

Background of the Kenya Electricity Transmission Company Limited

KETRACO, wholly owned by the Government, was incorporated on 2 nd December, 2008 under the Companies Act, pursuant to the reforms in Sessional Paper No.4 to plan, design, construct, own, operate and maintain high voltage national electricity transmission lines and regional power interconnectors which form the backbone of the National Electricity Grid.

In carrying out its mandate, the Company is developing a new robust grid system in order to:

1. Improve quality, reliability and safety of electricity supply throughout the country;
2. Transmit electricity to areas that are currently not supplied from the national grid;
3. Evacuate power from the planned generation plants;
4. Provide a link with the neighboring countries in order to facilitate power exchange and trade in the East Africa region;
5. Reduce electricity transmission losses hence reduce the cost to the economy, and
6. Protect electricity consumers from high cost of power by absorbing the capital transmission infrastructure.

The Status of Existing Transmission Network

When KETRACO was established, the existing transmission network comprised of 1,331km of 220kV, 2,211km of 132kV lines and was interconnected with Uganda through a 132kV double circuit line.

The then transmission system capacity was severely constrained particularly during peak hours when system voltages in parts of the Nairobi, Western and Mount Kenya regions drop below acceptable levels, occasioning load shedding despite availability of generation capacity in other parts of the country, particularly in the Coast and Seven Forks. The problem was partly due to inadequate power in major load centers and also transmission constraints particularly in the Western and Nairobi regions. Many parts of the network were not designed to the level of redundancy required to comply with the desired N-1 criteria for adequate reliability.

KETRACO Projects

KETRACO projects implementation fall into four broad categories based on their specific objectives, namely;

1. Electricity access projects

   These projects fall under the Energy Scale-Up Programme and their main objective is to increase electricity access and address the challenge of low connectivity. These projects:-

   Electricity access projects
   
2. System strengthening projects

   The System Strengthening/Capacity Enhancement projects will improve transfer capacity of electrical energy and address the challenge of low voltages, high transmission losses, unreliability of supply and network security. These projects includes:-

   Electricity access projects
   
3. Power evacuation projects

   KETRACO is implementing several projects targeting to evacuate power from various generation plants for injection into the national grid which include generation under 5,000+MW projects. These are:-

   Power evacuation projects
   
4. Regional interconnection project

   In order to facilitate regional power trade, KETRACO continues to collaborate with regional utilities and organizations in the spirit of economic integration. In order to enhance regional power integration, the Company is implementing the following regional power interconnection projects with neighboring countries:-

   Regional interconnection project
   

About KETRACO

As a public sector institution, we are dedicated to utilizing the best practice and provision of high quality professional services to our customers. The guiding principles in the operations of the company are

PR Contact person:

Name: Raphael Mworia
Designation: Manager, Corporate Communications
Tel No: 0719018750
Email: rmworia@ketraco.ke