Should water be cheaper than electricity?

 By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

10 April 2011

Emmanuel Omondi of Kericho asks a difficult question: why does water cost more than electricity yet the former comes from a shorter distance than the latter? He says that his water is pumped from just 10km away while the nearest power generator is at Ol Karia, a distance of 160km.

He adds: “My February [water] bill was Sh858.35 (11 units) while my electricity bill for the same month was Sh331.60 (24 units).”

Now the difficulty of the question is in that electricity and water are two distinctly different entities. Even though both are generally referred to as “utilities”, they are not utilised in similar ways in the house: one gives energy and the other nourishment. Therefore, this is a question attempting to compare apples to oranges.

Nevertheless, there are two points of interest. First; it is strange that Emmanuel is paying more for water than for electricity. Normally, the bills are the other way round… unless he has very few electrical appliances.

My conclusion is based on the average national electricity consumption. In the 2009/10 financial year, the Kenya Power and Lighting Company had about 1.2 million domestic customers. All together, they consumed a total of 1,290GWh (that is, 1,290,000,000 units) of electricity during the 12-month period.

This comes to about 1,000 units per customer over one year, or 90 units per month. So, Emmanuel’s 24 units are far below the national average for domestic consumers.

The second interesting point is in the way Emmanuel does the comparison: the water pump is nearer his house than the electricity generating station. Now the energy spent in pumping water does not go into covering the “ground distance”; it goes into raising the liquid from the reservoir level to that of the consumer.

For that reason, if the reservoir is higher than the consumer, no pumping is required – the water will flow down by gravity. This is one of the reasons why Nairobi at an altitude of about 1,670m above seal level gets its water from Ng’ethu dam which at about 1,800m…by the way, Ndakaini is even higher at 2,000m.

Electricity is also not significantly affected by the distance to the generating station. It mainly depends on the demand by your appliance.

The effect of the distance to the power stations comes in the form of heating of the transmission cables. In Kenya, we lose about 18 per cent of the power in this way. The generally acceptable level is around 15 per cent. Our losses are made worse by the thieves who drain cooling oil from the transformers.

 All the same, the fact that you live near a generator does not mean that you get your power from there exclusively…and therefore you should pay less.

The reason is that, all the power stations are interconnected in the National Power Grid. Thus the people of Naivasha where Ol-Karia is located also get power from Kindaruma, Turkwell, Kipevu etc as well. So we all share the transmission loss equally.