"Electricity Consumption & Complementary Infrastructure for Enterprises in Kenya," Bob Muhwezi

Bob Muhwezi, PhD student at UMass Amherst, presents his recent research in a talk titled "Examining Electricity Consumption and Complementary Infrastructure for Small and Medium Enterprises in Kenya" as part of the Irving Institute's New Energy: Conversations with Early-Career Energy Researchers series.
In Kenya, between 2010 and 2015, the number of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) connected to the grid increased by over 60%. Despite this substantial increase, little is known about the behavioral patterns or conditions that contribute to increased electricity consumption among these SMEs. In his talk, Bob Muhwezi, PhD student at the University of Amherst Massachusetts, will discuss a recent study that addresses the problem through a longitudinal analysis of monthly electricity bills for over 179,000 grid connected SMEs in Kenya. The study leverages multiple publicly available geospatial datasets to estimate how complementary infrastructural variables (such as access to roads, markets, financial services, and macro/micro-economic conditions) correlate with sustained electricity consumption growth by SMEs.
Bob Muhwezi is a third year PhD student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Prior to joining UMass, he graduated with a master's in electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) from Carnegie Mellon University-Africa in Kigali, Rwanda. He then worked in the planning department of the Energy Development Corporation (EDCL) of Rwanda where he was responsible for modeling optimal expansion of the nation's generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure. His current research centers on the application of data-driven methods to understand electricity demand in data-scarce countries. Specifically, he uses a combination of remotely sensed and ground-collected data to understand how infrastructural features influence electricity consumption growth in some sub-Saharan countries.