Umeme resorts to oil-less transformers

Oct 24, 2016

This is also expected to reduce on the losses suffered by the utility company as a result of vandalism of its transformers and other property

Power distributor, Umeme is resorting to using transformers without oil as part of its efforts to conserve the environment, Selestino Babungi, its chief executive officer has said.

This is also expected to reduce on the losses suffered by the utility company as a result of vandalism of its transformers and other property

According to information from Umeme, vandalism and power theft costs the company an estimate of sh75 billion annually. On the hand, the company suffers both technical and commercial losses at an estimated 13% and 6.2% respectively.

"Whereas technical losses reduction requires significant network investments, commercial losses are the easiest to fight," Babungi said during a tree planting exercise carried out at Salama School for the Blind in Nkonkonjeru Sub County in Mukono district over the weekend.

"We are shifting from using wooden poles to alternative sources like concrete poles, underground networks and transformers that do not use oil. We are already doing it in through disposing off old transformers," Babungi said.

The tree planting done in partnership with Nature Uganda was informed by Umeme's signature environmental conservation initiative dubbed U-Green, which is part of the company's corporate social responsibility efforts. That saw over 1,000 trees of different species being planted. However, the company targets to plant a million trees across the country.  

The U -Green initiative aims at implementing and inspiring community action on environmental conservation.

Babungi the initiative is timely since only 16% of the households are connected to the national grid while only 2% of the households use electricity for cooking. This means that 98% of Uganda's households use charcoal and firewood for cooking.

"This initiative will help us bridge this gap by replacing the trees cut as people are looking for a source of energy," Babungi said.

Explaining the need for tree planting and environment conservation, Achilles Byaruhanga, Nature Uganda's executive director said Uganda had 10.8 million hectares of forests covering about 45% of its land by 1900. He, however, said this has since reduced to only 2.5 million hectares with about 90,000 hectares of forests being cut down annually.

He said they have planted over 2.5 million in the last two years and plan to plant 5 million trees in the next five years.

"We should change our attitudes towards tree planting since Uganda depends on nature for food and earnings through tourism," Byaruhanga said.

Francis Kinubi, the school headmaster hailed both Umeme and Nature Uganda for the timely initiative considering change in climate and weather patterns that have been caused by massive deforestation that has affected food production.

"Since the year begun, we haven't received normal rainfall we used to and this has greatly affected our food production," Kinubi said.

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