Kenya Power and Lightning Company has continually had to deal with grievances from most of its consumers about token pricing. The latter challenge has left many electricity users in Kenya unsatisfied with the current metric of buying tokens. Prepaid metering was deliberately adopted to introduce convenience into power billing systems. It is clear that many people still do not understand how Kenya power’s complex system run and allocate units. The main concern raised by consumers is varied possibilities in the number of tokens awarded for a given amount of money and time of the month.
Most Kenya power users prefer to buy token when the month is about to end, purposely to get more tokens. Prices of KPLC tokens are calculated automatically and are inclusive of a fixed monthly charges of KEs. 150. Apart from token cost, mobile money costs of about KEs. 22 apply for consumers who opt to use M-Pesa payment option. When buying KPLC tokens for the first time in a month, most consumers often receive less than 5 units. As a matter of fact, consumers receive more token for all subsequent purchases in the same month.
Customers who buy more tokens purposely to last longer than a month often incur double fixed charges. As a result of this, such consumers end up receiving little tokens when making the next purchase. KPLC token cost per unit varied greatly depending on the time of the month, previous power usage, and punctuality of paying fixed charges.
How Does KPLC Bill You for Power?
Kenya power and lighting is keen to regulate power consumption depending on consumer load. For this reason, KPLC token prices for heavy duty usage are relatively higher than that of domestic and other low duty consumers. In practice, the first 50 units of power consumed in a month are charged at a low price rate. When monthly units exceed 51 units, the total cost of power may add up to about six times. Users who consume more than 1500 units in a month incur even higher costs of power and are all treated as commercial clients.
KPLC token purchase process is intensive, it includes virtual wallets such as M-Pesa, electronic system token generation, and monitoring of power tokens. Upon exhaustion, power is remotely disconnected prompting the user to buy another power plan. It is beneficial to understand how power is measured before trying to explain the pricing metric. Prepaid meters for instance measure electric power in Kilowatt-Hours abbreviated as KwH. One Kilowatt-Hour is a measure of 1,000 watts. Home and commercial appliances are labeled with power consumption rate indicating how much power they use in the circuit.
Calculating Power Consumption
A bulb rated at 100 watts will consume about 0.1KwH every hour when switched on. This implies that the bulb will consume one Kilowatt-Hour when left on for 10 hours. Kenya power and lightning company uses a designated token tariff which does not change often.
Many Kenyans prefer to buy tokens in the verge of the month. Even so, this belief is misleading as it does not guarantee one more tokens. Kenya power and lighting company tariff presented below clearly indicate all prepaid power metering techniques used to bill power users.
Source: Kenyan breaking news today – Tuko
