Kenya Power turns the heat on homeowners for rooftop solar installations

Utility company Kenya Power is pursuing the mandatory adoption of global standards for battery storage to stabilise the grid amid the proliferation of rooftop solar installations.

Kenya Power says if solar installations include sufficient battery storage, excess power can be sold to the grid through an official arrangement, and consumers can also utilise it to reduce pressure on the national grid to ramp up generation whenever there is a dip.

The electricity distributor says homeowners and commercial premises that have installed solar and tied it directly to the national grid are damaging the firm's infrastructure.

This is because the infrastructure at the tail end of the consumer network is not built to handle backflow of electricity. However, due to the variable nature of power generated by solar and its connection to the grid, electricity tends to flow back to the main transmission.

As such, homes with solar power can mimic how infrastructure at a substation or generation plant operates, which can damage nearby transformers or even put the lives of maintenance workers at risk.

“We have had fatalities,” said Kenya Power Chief Executive Eng Dr Joseph Siror. “The structure of our network is that we know where power comes from, so when our teams work on our infrastructure, they know the isolation points.”

As such, he said, the teams isolate the points facing the substations, unaware of backflow caused by solar panel installations.

“Our transformers are not designed for reverse power flow. They were not designed for power to flow from the low-voltage side to the high-voltage side unless in generation plants,” he said during the release of the firm’s full-year financials for the period ended June 2026.

Siror said Kenya Power has no issue with the installation of solar panels. However, the major issue is tying those installations to the grid in a way that Kenya Power’s supply works as a back-up.

“This aspect of generating power and tying it to the grid, if you isolate it, we are very okay. The only thing we would have lost as a company is demand. But if you tie it, you actually want to kill my staff and damage our assets,” he said.

How does this happen? Imagine the grid is balanced: generation at 1,500MW and demand at 1,500MW. A gated community or commercial premise is getting its power from a 100MW rooftop solar plant outside the grid.

But all of a sudden, cloud cover affects those using solar. As a result of tying their generation to the grid, they all get reconnected. And all of a sudden, demand rises by 100MW.

Since the grid was balanced before, Kenya Power is forced to ramp up supply to meet this new 100MW demand.

“To respond to this dip, my network has to stabilise the grid. And that is why I talked about liquefied natural gas (LNG) being a necessity given the proliferation of rooftop solar and the size of variable renewable energy (VRE) in our grid,” he said.

Kenya’s grid is supplied by 21 per cent VRE, above the recommended 15 per cent, which affects the quality of electricity, especially for businesses that are sensitive to frequency dips, such as glass manufacturing.

The same thing happens when the cloud finally clears, because all of a sudden the grid is supplied with 100MW it did not initially need, causing a spike.

It is for this reason that Siror says Kenya should impose a demand charge on those who have installed solar, particularly those who do not have adequate storage. This is the global practice in advanced markets.

“By the virtue of you tying, I must provide for mitigation against the adverse impacts caused on the grid and pay for the infrastructure you are tied to,” he said.

Additionally, the requirement for relevant storage for those with solar may be necessary, and this storage should be commensurate with the size of their generation.

“In the initial periods, someone will say ‘we are providing storage,’ but when we ask how much, they say 30 minutes.  If you have a cloud cover that lasts an hour in the morning, you will not even have charged the battery,” said Siror. “One of the engagements we want is adoption of global standards in terms of even the storage for any VRE that gets on the grid.”

The MD’s argument is that while a consumer with solar power may argue that they do not use Kenya Power electricity, by virtue of being tied to the grid, the utility company still has to maintain that infrastructure.

This explains why the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) has recently published regulations on net metering.

“A person shall not operate a net-metering system without a net metering system agreement with a licensee,” reads The Energy (Net-Metering) Regulations, 2024.

It adds: “A customer who, at the commencement of these regulations, has a renewable energy system of less than 1 MW in operation, may apply to enter into a net metering system agreement provided they meet the requirements of the regulations.”