Confirmed: Regional power pool goes live next month

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Twenty years after the formation of the Eastern Africa Power Pool (EAPP), electricity trade among member countries will commence in May 2025.

This follows the approval of the Day-Ahead market as well as the market and trading unit by the EAPP Council of Ministers, the pool’s top governing body, during the two-day concurrent 32nd Steering Committee and 20th Council of Ministers meetings at Kampala Serena Hotel on Thursday.

The Eastern Africa Power Pool (EAPP) is a regional body established in 2005 to coordinate cross-border power trade and grid interconnection among member countries.

Current member countries include Burundi, Djibouti, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Libya, South Sudan and Somalia.

Official statistics indicate that power pool members boast of a total installed generation capacity of about 90,000 megawatts that has been accumulated over the years against peak system demand of about 54,000MW by last year.

The idea of the day-ahead market is to create an auction system where countries with surplus electricity are able to make offers in terms of the amount of energy that they are ready to sell and at which price a day prior to the actual trading.

The market and trading unit, on the other hand, is an independent body that will oversee the daily trading of electricity among member countries, is one of the final steps that have had to be taken towards the realisation of the pool.

Currently, member countries are trading electricity based on individual bilateral agreements. For instance, Uganda trades with Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania based on individual agreements it signed with each of these countries.

Despite surplus in some countries, others are experiencing deficits. For instance, Uganda has an installed generation capacity of 2,048MW against a peak demand below 1,000MW.

The regional power pool is one of the avenues that countries like Uganda are banking on to offload their current excess generation capacities.

Member countries are currently developing and upgrading their interconnecting infrastructure to enable smooth exchanging of electricity once the market and trading unit is established.

According to officials, 9 of the 13 EAPP members are interconnected and that the World Bank is undertaking studies to interconnect Somalia with the East African region.