Pre-paid & post-paid power bills are exactly the same
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
21 September 2014
On 5th September
2014, Stephen Odundo wrote in “The
Cutting Edge” asking how the Kenya Power & Lighting Company
calculates the electricity units it sells via the new pre-paid tokens.
He illustrated his case with a recent experience where he sent in Sh250
and got 6.4units; then three days later he paid another Sh200 but got
16.7 units.
Two weeks on, Kenya
Power has not replied! So I will attempt to answer Stephen’s question.
There are three reasons why the number of units purchased by a certain
fixed amount of money can be different: first is the effect of the Fixed
Charge; second is the number of units – the higher it is, the more
costly per unit; finally is the periodic fluctuations in the fuel cost,
foreign exchange and inflation adjustments.
The pre-paid units
are calculated in exactly the same way as the post paid bill. So there
is a fixed monthly charge of Sh150 + VAT = Sh174. This is collected on
the first purchase of units during a particular month.
After that, there is
a consumption charge for the power units. This is worked out as follows:
first 50 units are charged Sh2.50 each; then from 51 to 1,500 units, the
price is Sh13.68; finally, from 1,501 to 15,000 units, the rate is
Sh21.57.
But that is not all;
there is a long list of adjustments, levies and taxes that follows. The
“adjustments” fluctuate from one month to the next; some levies are
calculated at a fixed shilling rate per unit while others are a
percentage of the power charge.
Curiously, while
doing research for this piece, I discovered that fro May, June, July and
August, the fuel cost adjustment has remained constant at Sh7.22 per
unit. That doesn’t seem credible to me and I’m still waiting for Kenya
Power to explain why.
The bottom line is
that the billing method is not straightforward; nay, it is actually
complicated – it requires a person of higher than average financial and
mathematical know-how to fathom. For that reason, I asked Kenya Power
how they feel about the fact that most of their customers don’t
understand how the bill is calculated. They are yet to respond!
Nevertheless, on 14th September, some one posted a tweet on twitter
claiming that “The average cost of a
unit of electricity in
First, the cost of power in
The second thing that I found was that, while
still complicated, the EEPC billing method is simpler than the one used
by
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