Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) is set to inject some Ksh258 million to drive the uptake of Electric Vehicles (EVs) in the country in the next three years.
The investment includes the cost of setting up charging stations at various locations across the country and the purchase of electric vehicles and motorbikes to aid company operations.
As part of this plan, KPLC launched an electric vehicle charging station located at Stima Plaza, which has been set up at a cost of Ksh6.5 million.
The charging station comprises two chargers; a 50 kW Direct Current (DC) (1 hour charging time) and a 22 kW Alternating Current (AC) (2 hour charging time) charger.
It is the second EV charging station that is owned by the utility firm after a similar one that is located at the Ruaraka Depot which hosts the Company’s transport section.
“The future of transport in electric and as a Company, we are very excited to be leading the conversations around E-mobility. Alongside our need to charge our electric vehicles, we intend to use our EV charging stations to collect data that will inform the next steps of our support to the growing E-mobility industry,” said Kenya Power’s Managing Director (MD) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Joseph Siror.
In addition to the EV charging station located at Stima Plaza, KPLC will install nine other charging stations by the end of July 2024 at various Company offices across the country including Donholm, Nakuru, Mombasa, Mtito Andei, Kisumu, Eldoret, Roysambu, Electricity House Nairobi and Ragati.
“We have set aside an annual budget of KShs.20 million to set up EV charging stations at all our offices across the country. Beyond the additional charging stations that we intend to put up in the current financial year, we intend to install 10 additional facilities annually in 2025 and 2026,” said KPLC boss Siror.
Alongside the EV charging station, Kenya Power has also launched two electric heavy-duty vehicles that will be deployed for routine operations.
The Company intends to scale the number of electric vehicles in its fleet through the purchase of an additional 9 electric vehicles (heavy and light duty) and 25 electric motorcycles by the end of December 2024.