Homes and businesses with solar power plants face fines for illegally dumping excess electricity into the national grid, in new regulatory changes meant to protect Kenya Power’s distribution network.
The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) has introduced a dumping surcharge in regulations that allow consumers to supply excess electricity from their solar plants to Kenya Power.
Consumers who generate their own power but also buy from the grid, also known as prosumers, are allowed to feed their excess electricity to Kenya Power in line with the Energy (Net-Metering) Regulations in 2024. They must, however, have an agreement with Kenya Power.
But Kenya Power has decried cases of illegal solar connections to the grid, saying that it is posing a serious threat to the stability of the network, besides risking the lives of its technicians and engineers in routine network maintenance work.
A growing number of businesses and wealthy homes have installed solar plants as back-ups to supplies from Kenya Power. But the majority lack battery storage, meaning that they must turn to the national grid whenever generation by the solar dips.
‘Introduce dumping surcharge, any electrical energy dumped into the Company’s network without prior written authorisation shall be measured and charged at the applicable base tariff specified in this Schedule of Tariffs,’ reads the changes gazetted on Friday last week.
‘Without prejudice to any other action that the Company or the Authority may take under the applicable laws and regulations if the dumping leads to injury or damage to equipment.’
Epra defines dumping as the unauthorised injection of electrical energy from a consumer’s generating system into Kenya Power’s network without approval or without a net metering agreement.
Joseph Siror, the Managing Director of Kenya Power, said that the illegal connections of solar to the national grid have led to fatalities in addition to the risk they pose whenever these customers suddenly switch to the grid for electricity, especially when cloud cover pushes solar generation to near zero.
‘Uncontrolled grid-tied solar is one of our (Kenya Power) biggest issues currently. A number of customers tie to our grid without informing us, and this poses a risk to the safety of our staff besides damaging our infrastructure,’ Dr Siror said on Friday when the utility announced its financial results for the year to June 2026.
‘If we have our customers with solar installations with a combined capacity of 100MW meeting their demand, in case of cloud cover they immediately come to the grid to get the 100MW, and thus sudden change triggers a frequency dip and distorts the supply-demand balance, and you can easily lose the grid.’
An aging grid, which is in dire need of revamp besides being overstretched due to the surge in connections, has further made it vulnerable to any shocks, prompting Kenya Power to warn against any disruptions.
The Net-Metering Regulations of 2024 allow prosumers with their own power plants whose capacity does not exceed 1 Megawatt (MW) to sign agreements with Kenya Power to allow them to feed the excess electricity to the utility.
Prosumers are connected to the national grid via a meter that records the amount of electricity they supply and buy from Kenya Power.
Under the agreement, any excess electricity they supply to Kenya Power is offset from their future bills for the power they buy.
The provision for offsetting the bills is meant to protect Kenya Power from spending billions of shillings to pay for renewable energy, notably solar being fed into the grid amid a mass shift of many firms and wealthy individuals to own power generation.
Big firms such as Bamburi Cement, carbon dioxide manufacturer Carbacid Investments, Africa Logistics Properties, GlaxoSmithKline and the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology have recently set up their solar plants.
Wealthy families have also turned to solar power plants, with some solely running on it to power their homes.
Official data from Epra shows that Kenya had 326.7MW of solar energy as at December last year, accounting for 51.9 percent of the total installed capacity of captive power in the country.
Captive power capacity refers to power generation plants that are privately established for self-consumption.