Back in late 2019, the world was just starting to learn about the corona virus. It was still in its early stages and no one knew what to expect. News outlets and social media reported on a very infectious disease in a far away land. No one ever expected the virus to reach our doorstep. However, on 12th March 2020, the first infection in the country was confirmed by the Ministry of Health. Everyone was in a state of panic, seeing the adverse effects the virus has had in other countries like infections in very large numbers and deaths at high rates. Not to mention the blow it dealt to economies of already developed nations.
As time moved gradually, we came to notice how the effects of the virus varied across nations. In African countries, the rates of infection and death were lower. Though this was faulted, by the west, to low testing and reporting.
The virus, in its many demerits, did help reveal faults some aspects of our nation’s sectors like health and power. As we moved on and decided to live with the virus, changes had to be made. The stay-at-home order had to be promoted by businesses and organisations. They implemented work-at-home policies and moved some of their workforce out of the office. This was really good for most people. It cut costs on fuel and saved time spent in traffic in the morning trying to rush to work. This saved companies a lot of money on renting office space. Some even tool the opportunity to downsize, both office space and their employees. This was not very good for building owners who lost a lot of revenue in rent money nor those employees who did not meet the cut. All over social media sites like Twitter, people shared their unfortunate problems after getting terminated.
In the midst of working at home, the problems started sprouting. The most apparent was with power. The national and only distributor of power in the country, Kenya Power, came into the spotlight. Issues with reliability were major. Customers on Twitter ranted on the unreliability of the service. Unplanned blackouts, power cuts, faulty transformers that left customers without power for days. This led to a lot of frustration with Kenya Power all over. Customers also compared the rates in which the company sold power tokens to different customers, decrying how much went into just taxing. This really brought down the value of their money in terms of buying tokens. The obvious thing was that Kenya Power was becoming slowly an unreliable option with power. Social media discussions pointed to solar power as a viable alternative to power from Kenya Power.
Solar power is a renewable source of energy available to anyone. All you need is a solar panel and batteries. However, due to some needs from users, the amount you would need would not be sustained from one panel and a battery. One would require a larger set up. A larger setup would require more entry fees but in the long run be very sustainable and Kenya Power supply would be just backup.
This put the government at crossroads, would let its citizens get into cleaner more reliable energy or would it save its company. The choice for the was an easy one and they decided to save the company. What would follow is a series if new regulations to the sector. The rules were on licensing and operations. Even the senate committee on energy questioned the regulations, cautioning they would slow down the uptake of solar energy in the country. They would require installation professionals to have a valid license from Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) at around KSH. 2,250 and KSH 6000. It also requires the devices to be registered with the authority among other regulation.
These regulations were seen a move to protect Kenya Power amid falling profits even being a monopoly. More of the regulations are discussed by Martin Mwita, a business writer on the Star, on his article “State drafts tough rules for solar energy“. People on social media noted how the government was trying to make it harder on everyone from individuals to companies from getting into the solar sector.
Dan's 