Electricity is highly connected with every economic and social activity. It is more than provision of light; rather it turns rural areas into urban model, Melaku Taye, communication Director at Ethiopian Electric Utility said.
As to him, The Ethiopian Electric Utility (EEU) has set three objectives. The First one is that it exerts its efforts to decentralize decision making on power distribution and maximize access to electricity. Second is outsourcing some service provisions in which educated youths play crucial role to address the highly increasing demand for electricity.
It is very difficult to the EEU to address this demand alone because it requires more budget and technology transfer. The third pillar is modernizing the EEU’s internal structure.
EEU has been operating for a longtime but used to apply the most backward system. That is why even the population that has access to electricity is not getting quality service from the Utility. The service provision is conducted on old electric distribution infrastructures, since it was not upgraded in a timely manner.
At the national level, Ethiopia has limitation in performing meaningful expansions of electric distribution networks. New power generating projects have been constructed in different parts of the country and the electric generating capacity has been improved. However, there are no adequate distribution networks to take the generated electricity to households. The distribution part of generating the electricity has been neglected. This is the main reason why the EEU was established by separating itself from the EEP, Melaku said.
As a result, the utility has reached to 81 new rural towns over the past six months which had no electricity before. The institution stretched 9,800 kilometer high voltage lines and 789 kilometers of lower voltage lines for the towns.
With regard to new subscribers, new electric meter for 176,097 people is installed and individual client’s number over the past six months has been increased. Of these, 96 percent are post-paid customers while the rest are pre-paid clients. This increased by 59,290 or 33 percent when compared to last year’s first half. Despite all the challenges the institution faced since last year, it performed exceptionally during the first half of 2021/22 fiscal year.
Due to the war lasted for over a year in Amhara and Afar regions, the EEU’s infrastructure, offices and properties have been damaged and vandalized.
Most of the time, the EEU is criticized of resource wasting. And to solve this, it has counted and digitized each and every property of the EEU over the past six months including poles. It has already digitized information from which transformers, poles and substations every customer is getting electricity from.
Fundamentally, the EEU buys electricity from the EEP, the power generator, and sales it to end users and generated 8.9 billion Birr from energy sales over the past six months. This excludes regional states affected by the war. Out of the 8.9 billion Birr, 2.1 billion was generated from new clients that subscribed for the service during the aforementioned period. It generated 32.6 million Birr from sales of used properties like scrap metals of used cars.
Previously, the EEU structurally and in terms of human resources and technology was not strong as such but now, it is modernizing itself internally including employing professionals with high skills. Until last year, customers had to endure long queues to settle bills or to get a new line. Now, it becomes history. Corruption was also high and is not fully mitigated yet.
As to Melaku, the total customers, 363,675 are paying electric bills using digital payment platforms. Out of these, 19.7 percent paid at bank branches, 3.7 percent used CBE birr, two percent used mobile banking, and one percent used Tele-birr.
As to him, there were also complaints that post-paid clients were not able to get the services as per they need timely. Many of the institution’s officers were also observed using guessing mechanism when preparing the electric consumption bill instead of reading the meter in person.
To resolve the problem, the institution introduced a hand-held device supported by GPS. This forces the officer to go and see the meter. It also deployed a number of other technology applications, to solve long-lasting problems in the EEU’s services.
In addition, it installed new call centers that can handle 80 calls at a time, using the institute own telecom line and used to rely on Ethio-telecom’s line for long but it was not effective.
The existing distribution network is disproportionally very low, compared to the population’s growth. Besides, the lines are old, over loaded and exposed to frequent power fluctuation. However, since the past few years, the power outage frequency and the time it takes to come back is improved. Fluctuation happens when infrastructure at some point is damaged, including a transformer explosion, at which point the institution uses planned interruptions, but some areas get light while others do not by redirecting the lines.
Addis Ababa network improvement project has been finalized. EEU secured USD 162 million loans from China Exim bank, while 15 percent is financed from government budget.
The first phase of upgrading networks in Addis Ababa, Adama, Hawassa, Bahir Dar, and Jimma has been finalized. Currently, similar network upgrading projects are underway in Wolaita, Shashemene, Gondar, Harar, Debreberhan, and Debremarkos.
New upgrading projects are also underway in all towns within 50 kilometer radius in the vicinity of Addis Ababa. A new project office was established to start the projects in ten new towns as well after the study was finalized and USD 175 million was secured.
Another study has also been finalized to start network upgrading projects in 64 towns. All these projects deal with upgrading the existing distribution lines for regional capital cities, zonal and up to woredas.
Since Ethiopia’s geographical area is very vast, it takes very huge investment to cover this huge landmass with ruggedness geographical areas to stretch networks. It also consumes much time to achieve and is not feasible. Remote areas far from grid lines must get the access to electricity through off-grid systems.
New modalities are already finalized and a number of studies for feasible off-grid towns and villages are conducted.
Last year, EEU started off-grid projects in 12 rural towns. Of these, eight have been finalized, while four were not due to conflict and instability. This year, 29 off-grid projects have been launched including the four that rolled down from last year.
These areas have never seen electricity and grid lines will never reach them. For instance, Kurile is found on the tip of Ethiopia’s border in Somali region. There are similar areas in Gambella, Bale, and Omorate. These towns are woreda seats but are impossible for grid lines to reach there.
On the other hand, as to Melaku, EEU has lost over 1.2 billion Birr worth of infrastructure and property due to the war in Amhara, Afar and Tigray regions. Most have been looted. This does not include the revenue lost from clients in these regions.
Six of the district offices in Afar region were completely looted, while 30 EEU offices were looted and destroyed in Amhara region. The institute has a huge national electrification program warehouse at Kombolcha which was completely looted.
Close to 70 percent of electric infrastructure equipment and input is imported. By now, local suppliers began to supply some spare parts substituting the imported ones that enable to save foreign currency which is encouraging. But even local manufacturers need the currency to import the inputs.
Over the past six months, 131 electric infrastructure theft cases on railway lines were registered, costing the EEU 16.5 million Birr, it was learned.
BY ABEBE WOLDEGIORGIS
The Ethiopian April 20/2022
