Impact of household electricity theft and unaffordability on electricity security: A case of Uganda

Benard M. Wabukala, Nicholas Mukisa, Susan Watundu, Olvar Bergland, Nichodemus Rudaheranwa and Muyiwa S. Adaramola

Energy Policy, 2023, vol. 173, issue C

Abstract: Renewable energy sources (RES) dominance in Uganda's electricity mix is challenged by affordability and theft. To assess electricity affordability, the study proposed a probabilistic method to quantify the households into different electricity categories for both urban and rural areas. Alternative electricity billing schemes based on Scenarios A to D for the households to enhance legal connection and consumption of electricity were proposed. The study established that the utility registers the highest electricity theft losses in rural households. The monthly utility revenue collected in urban areas was about 2.9 times that collected in rural areas because of the higher number of legally connected households with a monthly consumption of 1.5 times than that of rural households. From the monthly income spendable on electricity, rural and urban households could only afford 25.07 kWh and 38.29 kWh, respectively, which are less than the average household electricity consumption for Uganda. Also, the initial connection fee to the power grid is very high for the households to afford it in a single down payment. Of the proposed alternative billing schemes, Scenario B and Scenario D yield the least monthly utility revenue collected for the urban and rural households, respectively.

Keywords: Electricity theft; Electricity affordability; Electricity tariffs; Renewable energy; Electricity consumption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421522006309
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:173:y:2023:i:c:s0301421522006309

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2022.113411

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().