Page 19 - EPSI Magazine Issue 8 final 2018.indd

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why the several off-grid projects advertised by the
Rural Electrification Agency remain un-taken up and
or received lukewarm attention from would be bid-
ders. The scenario for the national grid is cheaper be- bution network. Common commercial wisdom
cause the system capital development costs and so
is the operations and maintenance costs are spread
over a larger client base compared the often-smaller
consumer base of most off-grid systems.
Non-the-less even the national grid supply costs,
when charged fully to the consumers as the case is in
Uganda, can exceed the disposable incomes of the
majority of the rural folks who make up the largest
component of the unserved 78% of Ugandans. In
Uganda the tariff methodology demands for full cost
recovery and does not allow for cross-subsidization
across consumer groups. Since domestic users im-
pose larger operations and maintenance costs on the
system followed by commercial and light industry
users, where the rural consumers fall, it is inevitable
few rural consumers would come on board readily.
By the nature of rural communities’ economic stand
their consumption would also be low. Thus, rural dis-
tribution is not at all attractive to a company with a
profit motive.
It is thus a folly of the highest order to expect
that a private company such as UMEME Limited
will lead the drive to expand the national distri-
dictates that UMEME Limited would be reluc-
tant to voluntarily invest in lengthy and costly
to maintain rural distribution networks with low
end energy consumers. Any other private sector
power distributor would behave the same way.
Mitigating Environmental Degradation
Through Electricty Use.
The government of Uganda must choose to
connect the larger component of the country’s
unserved population to save the environment
for better weather patterns allowing for greater
food production and conservation of our living
environment.
The Action Agenda to Uganda’s Sustainable
Energy for All (SE4ALL) of 2015 estimates that
the above noble objective can only be achieved
in 2030 if 670,000 new connections are made
each year assuming a population growth rate