Safaricom 2023 Sustainable Business Report

51 OUR BUSINESS OUR STAKEHOLDERS KPI SUMMARY PATHWAY TO A PURPOSE-LED TECHNOLOGY COMPANY OUR MATERIAL TOPICS ENHANCING ENERGY SECURITY AND ALIGNING WITH CLIMATE ACTION Electricity prices in Kenya have been rising steadily as Kenya Power seeks to raise more money to fund the upgrade of its ageing distribution systems. From the beginning of April 2023 – coinciding with Safaricom’s new financial year – the energy regulator approved price increases of approximately 63%. In the light of these rapidly rising energy tariffs, compounded by escalating diesel fuel prices and grid instability, and because energy, security and availability are critical for our platforms, our key energy management priority in FY23 was to enhance energy security. Kenya Power, which owns and operates most of the electricity transmission and distribution system in the country was affected by three major national blackouts that resulted in cumulatively over 24 hours blackout. Consequently, over 1 000 sites were unavailable, and this impacted over one million subscribers. Our response has been to accelerate deployment of solar energy; implement measurement, digitalisation and automation; conduct energy audits and the filing of measurement and verifications reports; together with cost management. Our alignment with our strategic pillars is set out in the table alongside. STRENGTHEN THE CORE BE A FINANCIAL SERVICES PROVIDER ACCELERATE NEW GROWTH AREAS ACHIEVE COST LEADERSHIP • Deployed solar at 1 432 sites . Solar now accounts for 22% of the energy mix at monitored connected sites. This has resulted in the avoidance of resulting in over 370 tCO 2 e annually – a highly positive move in the context of our carbon constrained world. • Modernised energy storage to increase storage efficiency, modernising 950 sites . • Installed more efficient rectifiers at 278 sites to improve energy efficiency. • Installed hybrid systems with more than one energy source at 450 sites to encourage battery deep cooling and reduce diesel consumption. • Reduced energy consumed per site including by capping diesel costs . This has been one of the contributing factors to reduced data bundle costs, thereby promoting financial inclusion. • Digitised energy data to facilitate remote monitoring. • Rolled out data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) to six sites to monitor, measure, manage and control energy consumption in real-time. • Enhanced operational support system (OSS) monitoring , leveraged remote network environmental software monitoring equipment, created alarms and alerts. • Built our own energy dashboards to enable remote monitoring and improve network stability and energy efficiency . • Conducted training on various digital energy platforms such as Microsoft Power BI. • Deployed 218 smart meters to the network. • Use of solar has not only lowered carbon emissions, but also helped to reduce costs. Costs savings amounted to KSh 23 000 at on-grid sites and KSh 59 000 at off grid sites. • 13% of sites with solar have not had any other fueling done. • Fitted 38 sites with free cooling units . We continued to explore energy as a service (EaaS) to stabilise the remote cluster and improve service availability through mini-grid establishment with Safaricom as anchor tenant, connecting four sites. We also initiated Power Purchase Agreements and Independent Power Product partnerships at Rhemba island in Homa Bay County, as well as Turkana and Muranga counties. Pleasingly, we once again qualified for ISO 50 001 certification.