Electricity consumers in Oman’s rural areas grow by 7%

Muscat: Total number of consumers of Rural Areas Electricity Company (Raeco), which serves people in rural areas, has increased by 7.4 per cent to 33,187 by the end of 2015, from 30,904 customers for the same period of last year.
As many as 70 per cent of Raeco customers are in domestic category and consume around 49 per cent of total energy supplied. Government and commercial customers consumed 19 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively, of the total electricity supplied, according to the latest annual report released by Raeco.
The total consumption of other categories is around 17 per cent. The consumption pattern may change in future when more large industrial and tourism customers are connected to Raeco networks, especially after the completion of some critical projects such as high voltage network projects in Musandam and feed new areas of electricity, which led to the involvement of a large number of customers.
34 diesel power stations
Raeco’s electricity generation covers 34 diesel power stations across the Sultanate. The capacity of electricity generation has increased and efficiency also improved as a result of effective operations of the systems.
Raeco is implementing a project for building a 132 kV high voltage line and grid station 132/33 kV, which aims to connect and provide reliable power supply in the state of Haima in Al Wusta governorate. This project is the first project that the company has done in the field of high voltage 132 kV transmission system. It is a quantum leap in the company’s operations and is an important development projects to cover the growth and the increase in the demand for electricity in the state at a cost of approximately 6.35 million.
Rural power generation had increased from 757 GWh in 2014 to 863 GWh - an increase of 14 per cent in total power generation.
Subsidy allocated to the company in 2015 reached more than OMR66 million. Government subsidy increased by more than 36 per cent in 2015 due to increasing in regulated unit distributed and numbers of customers.