Kenya Power is venturing into the solar energy business. This is as more Kenyans embrace the use of solar panels to power their homes and businesses in rejection of expensive and unreliable power solution that Kenya Power has been providing.
Apart from getting into the solar energy market, Kenya Power will be tasked with determining who supplies excess solar energy to the national grid.
According to regulations that have been published by the Energy and Regulatory Authority (Epra), homes and businesses that are using less than one megawatt (MW) but have no means to store the excess power they generate will sign 10-year contracts with Kenya Power to have their excess power inject into the national power grid.
“The licensee (Kenya Power) shall examine all applications in Regulation 7 within sixty (60) days and on a non-discriminatory basis,” the Epra regulations state.
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According to the regulations, solar power producers will sell their excess out to the grid and also get supplies from the grid when their output is low, during times such as night time.
“However, they will not be able to receive any monetary compensation from Kenya Power for the electricity that they export to the grid. This is because the self-generation plants are supposed to meet the consumers’ own energy needs and should not be for commercial use,” a media report on the regulations say.
“If a solar user has sold more power to the grid than he has imported, the utility firm will offer him a credit of 50 percent for each unit he exported which will lower his power bill for the following month.”
Kenya Power is also planning to start installing solar panels on homes and businesses to cash in on the wave of solar energy.
Part of this plan will see Kenya Power scout for customers seeking to have solar panels installed on their rooftops and contract private firms to do the job under a design-build-finance and operate model.
It will then sell the generated power at a discounted rate to the owners of homes and office blocks hosting its solar plants.
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