East African Community members have pulled out of a proposed regional power sharing pool to avoid duplicating the intentions of a bigger initiative.

The five EAC countries have since 2003 been interconnecting their power lines to improve supply, stabilise access and foster trading in electricity across national borders.

The EAC’s senior energy officer Peter Kinuthia said the EAC member states also belonged to the wider Eastern Africa Power Pool (EAPP) under which the EAC Power Pool falls. EAPP is meant to link up nine countries by 2018.

The overlap would not make investment sense as member states are required to contribute to each initiative.

This means that the five countries will have their power lines connected to the larger power pool, whose headquarters will be in Addis Ababa. Four other countries – Egypt, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan – are members of the wider pool.

Mr Kinuthia said the experience of EAPP has shown that contributions from member states and member utilities are not sufficient to cover the recurrent and development budget. As a result, resources have to be mobilised from development partners. EACPP would face a similar scenario; besides, it would be approaching the same development partners currently supporting EAPP.

Under the Tripartite Free Trade arrangement, a regional power market linking EAPP and the Southern Africa Power Pool (SAPP) is envisaged. It is estimated that about a quarter of electricity generated in EAPP countries comes from hydropower with future investments creating a greater dependence on the resource.

“Linking up national grids would provide a bigger pool of resources and mean one state can tap idle supplies in another,” said Mr Kinuthia.  

The power interconnections between Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania are expected to be complete in three years.

Under the EAPP, a high-voltage line between Ethiopia and Kenya will be ready in 2017, a Kenya-Uganda link will be complete by the end of 2016, and a Kenya-Tanzania connection will be working in 2018.

The Kenya-Ethiopia link will be a 500 kilovolt (kV) line, while the lines to Uganda and Tanzania will be 400kV. The line to Uganda would then connect to Rwanda and Burundi.

Kenya, which relies heavily on hydropower, geothermal and other renewables, aims to expand installed capacity to 6,700MW by 2017, from about 2,500MW currently. Tanzania aims to double generation to 3,000MW by 2016.

Ethiopia aims to become a major power exporter through large new dams and other renewable energy projects. By 2020, it aims to add 12,000MW to its grid.

The EAPP is being supported by the US government, the World Bank, African Development Bank, and the region’s governments.

Power shortages are common across East Africa and businesses often complain that poor or erratic supplies deter investors and push up prices of local products, as many firms rely on costly generators.

Other African regions like West Africa have already connected up their grids. Southern Africa has a series of links between South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, allowing the countries to trade power.