The Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) is piloting a geographical information system (GIS) aimed at improving its operations and customer service.
The project, known as the Facilities Database, will collate and manage digitally stored data on KPLC's customers and electricity facilities, drastically reducing downtimes and connection turnaround.
The system has been set up in the hope of helping KPLC detect power outages and mobilise response for quick reconnection, compared with the current system where customers call the company to report power failures and often wait for hours for a response.
KPLC's MD and CEO, Joseph Njoroge, says the project was one of several measures the company was embracing to enhance speed and efficiency in its service delivery.
The power company, which is the sole distributor of electricity in Kenya, has come under heavy criticism, especially for its poor customer service. The system, the company says, will improve its customer service by facilitating faster responses to emergencies.
Njoroge says the new system would help the company remotely identify problems, locate customers with ease, and locate faults along its transmission and distribution network, thereby reducing the need for repeated visits to customer premises.
“It will also ease and speed up the design of projects. Designers will not be required to physically visit the premises of a person applying for power supply, as they will be able to locate a customer's location on spatial maps from their offices,” says Njoroge.
This, the company says, will reduce the period taken to give power applicants a quote for supplying electricity to their premises, which, in turn, will reduce the connection period from the two months to four months to a number of days.
KPLC engineers must make a minimum of eight visits to an applicant who wants to be connected to the national grid, but the new system will reduce that to three.
Moreover, “notification of outages and faults to individual customers will be by SMS alerts, not through general messages that are sometimes ambiguous. There will also be no need for route sketches if supply is disconnected and has to be restored,” says KPLC's Simon Mwangi.
He says all KPLC customers would now be marked on a digital map, showing the power lines and equipment supplying their power. “This map includes aerial and a satellite image such as Google earth and hence locating customer premises for the purpose of providing services is very easy.”
The digital map, which is being deployed at a cost of $3 million, will also facilitate measurements of the length of line required to connect new customers, highlight market centres and settlements for potential electrification, and allow the online analysis of network losses.
“There is also the possibility of combining this map with the transport deployment unit to help coordinate faster emergency team response,” says Mwangi.
The system, which will be rolled out nationally in July, is expected to cut the company's losses from downtime and power outages, which are frequent in Kenya, and to deliver savings to businesses by cutting the need to revert to oil-powered generators.
Njoroge says KPLC was at an advanced stage of compiling the data for the system, which includes customer premises, meters, meter boards, power lines, transformers, substations, and offices.
The company will also use the new system to automate its power distribution in Nairobi and Mombasa, at a cost of 500 million Kenyan shillings.
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