Understanding Kenya Power’s warning on renewable energy — and why storage, smarter grids and better energy planning should be the way forward. By Edward Kinyanjui – Managing Director Plexus Energy Ltd

Solar Is Not the Problem: Kenya’s Grid Is Entering Its Next Stage of Development

Understanding Kenya Power’s warning on renewable energy — and why storage, smarter grids and better energy planning should be the way forward

By Edward Kinyanjui – Managing Director, Plexus Energy Ltd

Kenya Power’s recent warning about the growing amount of wind and solar electricity entering the national grid has understandably generated debate within the energy industry.

At first glance, the message could easily be interpreted as: Kenya has too much solar.

That would be the wrong conclusion.

What Kenya Power is really highlighting is a challenge that virtually every country successfully transitioning toward renewable energy eventually encounters:

How do you manage an electricity grid originally designed around predictable power stations when an increasing proportion of electricity now comes from the sun and wind?

For Kenya, this is not evidence that the renewable energy transition has failed.

It is evidence that the transition has reached its next stage.

First, understand Kenya Power’s concern

Electricity is unusual because supply and demand have to remain balanced almost continuously.

Think about the national grid like a giant water system.

If consumers require 1,500 litres every minute, approximately that amount needs to be supplied. Too little creates a shortage; too much creates another set of problems.

Electricity works in much the same way.

Traditional geothermal generation is relatively predictable. A power station can produce electricity throughout the day and night.

Solar and wind are different.

A 100 MW solar plant could be producing close to its maximum output during a sunny afternoon. A major cloud system can substantially reduce that production, while every television, factory, hospital and office connected to the grid continues consuming electricity.

Another generator therefore has to compensate.

That is what engineers mean when they talk about intermittency.

Kenya’s renewable-energy success has created a new challenge

This conversation needs to be viewed in context.

Kenya has built one of Africa’s most renewable electricity systems. Geothermal, hydro, wind and solar now make up the overwhelming majority of electricity generation.

But variable renewable energy — principally wind and solar — is becoming increasingly significant.

Kenya Power recently indicated that wind and solar can account for approximately 34% of the energy mix during peak demand and about 36% during periods of lower demand.

The utility’s concern is straightforward:

When a large proportion of electricity comes from sources whose output can change with weather conditions, the rest of the electricity system must be capable of responding quickly.

And responding has a cost.

Kenya Power may have to keep other generators available or dispatch additional generation when renewable production falls.

Ultimately, those costs can find their way into electricity tariffs.

So Kenya Power is right to raise the issue.

But there is another side to the conversation.

Kenya’s electricity problem is bigger than solar and wind

It would be misleading to attribute Kenya’s grid-balancing challenge entirely to renewable intermittency.

Kenya already experiences periods when electricity production exceeds demand.

EPRA reported that approximately 668.7 GWh of geothermal generation was curtailed in the year to June 2025, largely because of low demand during certain periods.

In other words, Kenya has at times been unable to consume all the electricity available from one of its most stable renewable resources.

This tells us something important.

Kenya doesn’t simply have an electricity-generation problem. We increasingly have an electricity timing, transmission, storage and demand-management problem.

We sometimes have electricity available when consumers don’t need enough of it — and insufficient flexibility when demand rises.

That distinction is critical.

Batteries are therefore part of the answer

Imagine a supermarket where fresh food arriving at noon had to be consumed immediately because there was no refrigerator.

The problem would not necessarily be excessive food production.

The problem would be the inability to store it.

Electricity storage performs a similar function.

A battery energy storage system — BESS — can absorb electricity when production is high and release it when the system needs it.

For solar, that could mean:

Daytime

Solar → Customer demand → Battery charging

Evening

Stored solar → Customer / Grid

Instead of losing renewable electricity or rapidly bringing another generator online, some of the energy has simply been moved from one part of the day to another.

This is why battery storage is becoming increasingly important globally.

Kenya’s own energy planning already recognises this.

The National Energy Policy identifies battery storage and pumped hydro as important technologies for integrating variable renewable energy, while government planning includes utility-scale battery projects.

EPRA similarly expects both plant-level and utility-scale BESS to play a significant role in Kenya’s future electricity system.

But making batteries mandatory raises an important question: Who pays?

This is where the current industry debate becomes particularly important.

Requiring new solar and wind projects to include battery storage may improve grid stability.

But batteries are not free.

Adding storage increases the capital cost of a renewable-energy project. That additional investment must ultimately be recovered somewhere — through the project’s electricity tariff, financing structure or another market mechanism.

If poorly designed, therefore, a regulation intended to make renewable energy easier to integrate could inadvertently make renewable electricity more expensive.

The objective should consequently not simply be:

“Every renewable project must install batteries.”

A better question is:

“Where does storage create the greatest value for Kenya’s electricity system, and how should that value be paid for?”

That may mean storage at some generating plants.

But it can also mean large utility-scale batteries positioned strategically within the national grid.

It can mean batteries installed at factories, hospitals, schools and commercial buildings.

And it can mean other technologies altogether.

Not every solar installation creates the same grid problem

This distinction is particularly important.

A 100 MW solar farm exporting electricity into the national grid is fundamentally different from a 500 kW solar installation on a factory roof where most electricity is consumed inside the factory.

In the second case, the solar system is primarily reducing the customer’s demand from the grid.

If properly designed around the customer’s daytime consumption, relatively little electricity may actually be exported.

This is known as self-consumption.

Kenya should therefore avoid treating all solar capacity as though it has an identical impact on the national grid.

Regulation should distinguish between:

• large grid-exporting renewable plants;
• commercial and industrial systems designed primarily for self-consumption;
• hybrid solar-and-storage systems;
• and small distributed rooftop systems.

The engineering impact of each is different.

Their regulation should recognise that.

Batteries are also more than energy storage

Modern battery systems can do considerably more than simply store afternoon solar electricity for use in the evening.

Depending on their design, sophisticated BESS installations can help stabilise frequency, manage voltage, respond rapidly to sudden changes in generation, reduce peak demand and provide backup power.

This opens an important policy question for Kenya.

If privately owned batteries provide services that help stabilise the national grid, should there eventually be a market that compensates their owners for providing those services?

Many advanced electricity markets are moving in this direction.

Storage should increasingly be considered part of electricity infrastructure — not merely an accessory attached to solar panels.

Kenya should also use more electricity when renewable energy is abundant

Storage isn’t the only solution.

There is another surprisingly simple approach:

Move some electricity consumption to the hours when electricity is plentiful.

Factories can schedule certain production processes during high renewable-generation periods.

Water utilities can pump water into reservoirs.

Commercial buildings can cool thermal storage.

Electric vehicles can charge.

Industrial refrigeration and cold-storage facilities can adjust operating schedules.

Eventually, smart tariffs can encourage customers to consume electricity when the grid has excess generation.

Instead of only changing electricity supply to match demand, we can increasingly change demand to match electricity supply.

This is called demand-side flexibility.

Kenya has another major advantage: geothermal and hydro

Kenya’s renewable-energy story should therefore not become a debate of:

Solar versus geothermal.

We need both.

Geothermal provides dependable renewable electricity around the clock.

Hydropower provides renewable generation with valuable flexibility.

Solar provides increasingly affordable daytime electricity.

Wind provides another complementary renewable resource.

Batteries move electricity through time.

And digital technology coordinates the entire system.

Together, these technologies are far more powerful than any one of them individually.

The grid itself must now become smarter

The International Energy Agency’s 2026 assessment of Kenya reaches an important conclusion.

Kenya has entered what the IEA describes as Phase 3 of variable-renewable integration — a stage where solar and wind are significant enough that their variability increasingly affects how the entire electricity system operates.

The IEA identifies three particularly important areas for Kenya:

open access, flexibility and storage, and ancillary services.

This is significant.

The international experience suggests that the solution to increasing renewable penetration isn’t simply restricting renewables.

It is modernising the electricity system around them.

Kenya therefore needs investment in:

• smart grids,
• better renewable-generation forecasting,
• modern grid-management systems,
• battery storage,
• stronger transmission infrastructure,
• regional electricity interconnections,
• flexible generation,
• demand-response systems,
• and eventually markets that properly value grid-support services.

What this means for businesses considering solar

Businesses should not interpret the current debate as a reason to abandon solar investments.

The conversation should instead change from:

“How many solar panels can we fit on our roof?”

to:

“What energy system best serves our business?”

A properly engineered commercial energy system should consider the customer’s consumption profile, daytime demand, evening demand, maximum demand, grid reliability, generator usage, electricity tariff and future energy requirements.

For some businesses, conventional grid-tied solar will remain economically appropriate.

For others, the optimal solution will increasingly become:

Solar + Battery Storage + Grid + Intelligent Energy Management

That combination can reduce electricity costs while simultaneously improving resilience.

Plexus Energy’s perspective

At Plexus Energy, we believe Kenya Power has started an important conversation.

Grid stability is fundamental. Nobody benefits from cheap electricity that cannot be delivered reliably.

But Kenya should be careful not to frame renewable energy itself as the problem.

The bigger challenge is that the architecture of our electricity system must evolve as the sources supplying it evolve.

Twenty years ago, Kenya’s electricity system was built around large centralized power stations supplying passive consumers.

The future will look very different.

Factories will generate electricity.

Homes will generate electricity.

Electric vehicles will consume and potentially store electricity.

Commercial buildings will contain batteries.

Power will increasingly move in several directions.

And software will decide, second by second, whether electricity should be consumed, stored or supplied.

That transition requires new technology, new regulation and new commercial models.

From an energy transition to an energy-system transition

Kenya has already demonstrated that an African economy can build an electricity system dominated by renewable resources.

The next challenge is more ambitious.

We must build an electricity system capable of intelligently managing those resources.

That means the next decade of Kenya’s energy transition cannot simply be about installing more megawatts.

It must be about making every megawatt more useful.

Generate electricity when it is cheapest.

Store it when there is excess.

Move it where it is needed.

Consume it when it is abundant.

And use technology to coordinate the entire system.

The debate triggered by Kenya Power should therefore not become Solar versus the Grid.

It should start a much more important conversation:

How do we build a grid capable of accommodating significantly more renewable energy?

At Plexus Energy, we believe the answer is clear:

Solar + Storage + Flexible Demand + Geothermal & Hydro + Smart Grid Management.

That is not a retreat from Kenya’s renewable-energy journey.

It is the next phase of it.

Plexus Energy Ltd — Powering Africa’s transition toward smarter, cleaner and more resilient energy systems.