Bottom-up power generation can lead us to gigawatt levels

Garissa Solar

An aerial photo of a 50-megawatt solar farm in Garissa County in December 2019.
 

Photo credit: File | Xinhua

The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) puts Kenya’s solar potential at 1.5 gigawatts. The installed capacity is a little over 100 megawatts, the largest being Garissa Solar at 55MW. We operate at 10 per cent of potential. Of the 37 solar ‘gigawatt club’ members, only two—South Africa and Egypt—are from Africa.

I believe President William Ruto reads me. In “Hybrid power model has put Kenya on top” (DN, August 13, 2022) I surmised: “If the Last-Mile Connectivity Project is a top-down electrification model, then its bottom-up equivalent is the Kenya Off-Grid Solar Access Project (Kosap).” The World Bank-funded Kosap is designed to increase energy access in 14 under-served counties via standalone solar systems for households and public facilities, mini-grids, solar water pumps and efficient cooking solutions.

Listening to the President’s speech in Parliament was, to say the least, enthralling. On energy, he said, “We shall facilitate the development of innovative and effective modalities to provide better off-grid systems, including enabling consumers to form small cooperatives for that purpose.”

This critical success factor is exactly what I surmised in “Strategic trinity holds key” (DN, March 31, 2021), in which I used a Second World War analogy of “better many U-boats than a few super warships”. I opined that a new energy strategy should be premised on the objective of a million households with a solar system of a kilowatt or above (totalling 1GW).

Solar systems

The three-pronged strategy? One, the government should create an enabling environment through legislation and policy implementation to effect a localised feed-in tariff (FiT) with net metering to spur investment in high-capacity home solar systems. Two, the ‘financial sleeping giant’ of the cooperative sector need be ‘woke’ that renewable energy is the new gold standard in investments. Three, embrace solar companies’ innovative and customisable products and service packages.

The President has kicked the ball on the first pillar of the ‘trinity’ through his policy direction. It is for his foot soldiers to capitalise on his popular call to “subsidise production, not consumption.”

The Kenyatta administration zero-rated r importation of renewable products. It behoves the Ruto government to now subsidise the same—especially raw materials for local production. Solar panels, inverters and storage items can be locally produced, with a multiplier effect on the industry—from production, installation, training and consumption of solar systems to energy production, making the final user a ‘prosumer’.

To qualify for FiT, one’s system must be capable of producing up to 0.5MW, which policy wonks should reduce to 50KW, roping in institutions. But the President’s policy shift requires credit to be aligned to bottom-up economics. Let banks and saccos give longer-term loans to solar system purchasers.

Solar installers, design superior service level agreements (SLA). If Kenya Power can mull over paying its clients for downtime, why not you?

Ms Hassan is the business development manager for Solarnow Kenya. [email protected].