Located in Eastern Province, bordering Kigali City, Bugesera District was as a whole fed with power from Mount Kigali Power station located in Nyarugenge District of Kigali City which caused frequent power outages in Nemba, Shyara among other District Sectors
It was not easy for Rwanda Energy Group to identify causes of power outages which made REG staff and population spend days looking for a place where technical problems started which could stall business.
To address the problem, Rwanda Energy Group (REG) implemented two projects between July and September this year; Rwf 175 million back-up station to the Mount Kigali Power station and Rwf 72 Autoreclosers purchase.
The first project that cost Rwf175 million was to set up a back-up station to the Mount Kigali Power station connecting Ntongwe power station located in Ruhango District to sectors remote from Kigali which Mount Kigali station could not serve adequately.
According to REG Manager in Bugesera District, Rosine Kalisa, the project added 1.8 Megawatts to the then existing 7.7 megawatts, which reduced the power outages that were experienced by residents.
“Whenever all our electricity subscribers would start using electricity, mostly in night hours, Mount Kigali station would shut down as it became overloaded due to the large number of users,” Rosine Kalisa said.
Bugesera District electricity line has 267 power transformers, which made it difficult for REG’s technicians to know the cause of a power outage for instance in case a flying bird would have fallen on the cables or cables broke down.
This prompted REG start another project to buy three modern machines that identify faults along power lines known as “Autoreclosers” at Rwf72 million.
“Now, we can identify all faults on any given power line as fast as possible. Before, when the power was cut, we used to cross-cross all over the District looking for the cause of the technical error and where it started from. This would sometimes take us a whole day but now we can directly identify where the problems started while the autoreclosers also prevent the power cut in other areas besides where the problem started from,” Rosine Kalisa recounts.
Besides preventing all the District from getting the blackouts and directly identifying where the technical problem starts from, the autorecloser shows the way to resolve the technical issue.
Residents of Bugesera District who always complained of the insufficient power supply and frequent outages now say that these two projects have saved their jobs as they revealed it to IGIHE.
A resident of Nemba Sector, Mr. Ibrahim Bimenyimana who owns an electric cereals mill says that his clients would sometimes spend a day waiting for the power that had been cut to get their food pounded. “Now, after REG changed it, no lines of people come and spend several hours here because the power is sufficient,” he says.
According to REG, 44.40% of households in Bugesera are connected to electricity.
Leave a Reply