Safaricom offers $288 mln smart metre system to cut Kenya Power losses

NAIROBI: Kenya’s biggest telecoms operator, Safaricom, is in talks with Kenya Power to install a 31.7 billion shillings ($288 million) smart metering system for the utility to slash power losses, documents showed on Thursday.

The state-controlled utility, which is the main power distributor in the East African nation, suffers from annual power system losses of 23.46% on its transmission network, well above the global benchmark of 15%.

If the proposed system is implemented, Kenya Power should cut those losses, which it said last year were costing it 3 billion shillings every year, to 15.46% in two years, the documents from both firms showed.