Kenya is no longer importing power from its regional neighbours because of oversupply from its own sources.

Statistics from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics show that Kenya has not imported any power from Tanzania since November last year, while it has scaled down its imports from Uganda.

Kenya Power chief executive Ben Chumo said that Kenya was now self-sufficient in terms of power generation after more than 280 MW was added to the grid last year from various geothermal project.

READ: Geothermal plant adds 280MW to Kenya grid

“We have seen the geothermal projects add enough power to the national grid. We have more than enough and are actually now net exporters to Uganda and Tanzania,” Mr Chumo said.

Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have for a long time turned to each other to bridge power supply shortages on their respective national grids.

The KNBS data shows that since the beginning of the year, Kenya has imported 17.13 million kWh from Uganda, while exporting 13.83 million kWh to the same country.

Kenya has also imported 0.98 million kWh from Ethiopia. On the other hand, it has exported a total of 14.53 million kWh, with 0.7 million kWh of that going to Tanzania.

Kenya consumes an average of 540 million kWh of electricity each month, against an average 630 million kWh generated each month. Since July last year, the bulk of the country’s electricity is generated from geothermal sources, followed by hydro and thermal sources.

In the first quarter of 2015, geothermal sources generated 1,476.66 MW, hydro generated 1,018.08 MW while thermal sources generated 485.26 MW.

Albert Mugo, the chief executive officer of the Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) said that currently, Kenya is the only country in the region that has the capacity to supply its citizens and still sell to its neighbours.

“With an installed capacity of more than 2,100MW against a demand of 1,600 MW, we are able to offer exports to our neighbours and we do hope that in the next five years, electricity will be added to our basket of foreign exchange earners,” said Mr Mugo.

Kenya has been tapping the geothermal resources in the Rift Valley as part of its broader ambition to add 5,000 Megawatts to its electricity output by 2017. That will add to the country’s existing capacity of about 2,152 MW. The country has close 3,000 MW of proven geothermal energy in the Rift Valley, but currently exploits just over 390 MW of geothermal capacity.

Ethiopia also started selling its power to Kenya last year under the East Africa Community Power Pool agreement even though Kenya said that there wasn’t any electricity business between the two countries.

Despite this claim, data from KNBS shows that Kenya has bought 446MW from Ethiopia in the last nine months. In August last year, Ethiopia said that it was planning to export up to 400 MW to Kenya annually.

Last week, Ethiopian Electric Power chief executive Azeb Asnake said that they had signed an agreement to export 400 megawatts to Kenya.

Already China Electric Power Equipment and Technology has been picked to construct the Ethiopia-Kenya transmission line at a cost of $120 million, to be financed by the African Development Bank. The project is expected to be complete by August 2017.

Ethiopia earns more than $33 million from exporting electric power to Djibouti and Sudan.

“The power purchase agreement will see us earn $ 0.07 per kilowatt and by selling 400 Megawatts to Kenya, we will be have a great source of hard currency,” Mr Asnake said.

It is expected that Kenya will then sell the power to its neighbours through the interconnectivity agreements.