International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract—With technological advancement, demand side management has become important part of energy conservation in developed countries. In developing countries, it can also contribute to alleviating energy supply insecurity, but so far only a few countries have adopted it. This paper attempts to understand how administrative personnel in Kenya’s government agencies, including energy research institutions, perceived about the acceptability and accessibility of demand side management among the electricity consumers. We conducted the questionnaire survey among government officials, independent power producers and researchers to identify their perceptions about public awareness, willingness, and practice of adopting demand side management. Our questionnaire also attempted to clarify the viability and the impact of implementing various demand side management options. The results show that about 68% of the respondents believed that the public had low awareness. About 62% were still optimistic that the electricity consumers would adopt demand side management in the future. In terms of educating the consumers about the importance of this management, about 72% were rarely engaged. As to the extent to which our respondents found the viability of various demand side management options, the respondent emphasized the importance of price-responsive demand (81%), renewable energy adoption by households (74%), energy efficiency and conservation (64%) and integration of smart appliances (61%). About 48% of the respondents believed that the peak demand would be reduced by over 50% by implementing these options.

Index Terms—Demand side management, Kenya’s energy sector, electricity consumers, energy experts.

E. Kiprop is with the Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba 305-8572, Japan (e-mail: kipropkengu@gmail.com).
K. Matsui is with the Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba 305-8572, Japan (e-mail: kenichim@envr.tsukuba.ac.jp).
N. Maundu is with the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, Nairobi 30582-00100, Kenya (e-mail: nickmaundu2014@gmail.com).

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Cite: E. Kiprop, K. Matsui, and N. Maundu, "The Future Contribution of Demand Side Management to Solving Kenya’s Energy Insecurity Problems," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 111-115, 2020.

Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).