Industries, roads, offices are all mushrooming from different corners of Kampala city. These developments create growing demand for electricity in Kampala Metropolitan Area which contributes about 70 per cent of Uganda’s national demand currently at about 653 megawatts at peak. This demand is expected to grow to 987MW by 2030.

However, there is need for the transmission infrastructure used to sell power to electricity distributor, Umeme to meet the augmenting demand.
Government last year signed a $125m (Shs461b) loan from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to implement the Kampala Metropolitan transmission system improvement project.

Government through the Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Limited will construct new 220 kilovolt substations to upgrade from the present 132kV.
According to UETCL, there is urgent need to avoid severe capacity deficit in Kampala.

“Currently, the installed primary substation capacity of Kampala metropolitan area is 460MVA, hence the need to urgently reinforce the metropolitan transmission grid in order to avoid a severe capacity deficit,” Ms Pamela Byoruganda, principal public relations manager UETCL, says.

She also emphasised that the project aims to strengthen reliability and security of power supply.
For this to be realised, UETCL will increase the primary substation capacity of the area by an additional 890MVA and enhance the capacity of transmission lines in the area.

The transmission company will, for instance, upgrade Mutundwe substation, renovate and improve the capacity of Kawaala substation.