Landlords face jail as ERC enforces water heating rules

The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has begun conducting random inspections on buildings countrywide in a bid to apprehend landlords who are yet to comply with the solar water heating rules.

The Energy (Solar Water Heating) Regulations of 2012 compel property owners to install solar water heaters on commercial and residential buildings whose occupants use more than 100 litres of hot water a day.

The directive, whose deadline for compliance elapsed on November 25, requires new buildings, alterations or extensions to be fitted with solar water heating systems before use.

The solar water heating rules are aimed at residential houses with at least three bedrooms, boarding schools and colleges with 20 or more students and hotels, hostels and lodges with at least four beds.

Restaurants that serve at least 20 meals a day and laundries that handle more than 20 kilograms of clothes are also required to use solar water heaters.

“The commission is currently carrying out surveillance visits on buildings under construction and random spot checks on existing premises,” ERC director-general Pavel Oimeke said in a public notice on Wednesday.

In addition to the installation of solar water heaters, the directive requires landlords to conduct energy audits every three years and they must implement at least half of the audit recommendations within three years.

ERC gave property owners up to May 25, 2017, to comply failing which they would be liable to a fine of Sh1 million or a jail term of one year.

The deadline was then extended to November 25 to allow more people to comply with the law.

The extension has, however, yielded little fruit with a recent study by the ERC indicating that only about 77,000 solar water heating systems have been installed countrywide.

Property owners have often cited high costs of the systems as a hindrance to increased uptake.

But Mr Oimeke speaking in Nairobi early this year said the cost of equipment had declined and that establishments that are heavily reliant on hot water for their operations stood to make huge savings on their electricity bills.

“Cost is not a barrier. A few years back, it was between one and two per cent of the cost of construction but today, it has substantially gone down,” he said.

But even as the regulator moves in to enforce the rule, it will be interesting to see how successful the task will be considering the low levels of compliance across the country.

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