Kenya's national grid is straining under demand growth it was not built to absorb, with interconnected generation capacity frozen for over a year while electricity consumption accelerates at its fastest pace in at least five years.
- •The installed interconnected capacity has been stuck at 3,192 MW since December 2024, unchanged through June and December 2025.
- •No new grid-connected power plants were commissioned in FY2023/24, and the decommissioning of the 60 MW Kipevu 1 diesel plant that year reduced interconnected capacity from 3,311 MW to 3,199.9 MW, a level from which it has not recovered.
- •All capacity additions since have been captive solar installations serving commercial and industrial consumers, which do not feed the national grid.
Captive capacity has grown from 402.3 MW in June 2023 to 630.1 MW in December 2025, absorbing investment that might otherwise have expanded the grid.
Against that frozen supply base, demand has accelerated sharply with peak demand growing by an average of 78 MW per year between 2019 and 2024. In FY2024/25 alone it rose by 139 MW, the largest single-year increase in the dataset, reaching 2,316 MW.
By December 2025 the system was recording a peak of 2,439 MW, a biannual increase of 151 MW. At this rate of growth, the two pipeline geothermal plants licensed for the Menengai field, QPEA GT at 35 MW and OrPower 22 at 35 MW, would be absorbed by demand within months of commissioning.
The generation mix has shifted accordingly.
- •Geothermal, which provided 45.41% of grid energy in FY2022/23, contributed 40.06% in the second half of FY2025/26.
- •Wind has declined from 16.57% to 12.98% over the same period. The gap has been filled by sources with higher cost and emissions profiles.
- •Thermal generation has risen from 8.24% of the energy mix in FY2023/24 to 9.05% in H2 FY2025/26, a 24.27% increase in absolute output.
Electricity imports have grown from 4.85% of generation in FY2022/23 to 12.03% in H2 FY2025/26, with absolute import volumes rising 86% in FY2023/24 alone following the full commercialisation of the Kenya-Ethiopia HVDC link.
The combined consequence is that the renewable share of grid generation has fallen from 84.65% in FY2022/23 to 78.79% in H2 FY2025/26, a four-year deterioration that cuts against Kenya's NDC commitment to reach 100% renewable electricity by 2035.
Kenya's Shift in Consumption Trends
The rising fossil fuel burden is measurable in emissions with carbon dioxide output from electricity generation increasing by 27.11% in FY2024/25, reaching levels EPRA has flagged as inconsistent with decarbonization targets.
A shift in consumption is driving the acceleration.
- •The industrial sector, historically the dominant consumer at over 53% of total electricity use in FY2020/21, has seen its share fall below 50% for the first time, standing at 49.25% in H2 FY2025/26.
- •Domestic consumption has grown its share from 31% to 32.93% over the same period.
- •Night demand, historically the system's low point, has risen from approximately 1,152 MW in December 2024 to above 1,400 MW in H2 2025, a shift that has driven curtailment down from 812.8 GWh in FY2023/24 to 245.4 GWh in H2 FY2025/26 but simultaneously reduces the overnight buffer that grid operators rely on.
New customer connections are no longer the primary demand driver with annual connections peaking at 716,209 in FY2020/21 and have fallen to an annualized rate of approximately 364,000 in FY2024/25. The H2 2025 biannual figure of 182,195 is also the lowest in the dataset. Demand is now being driven by consumption intensification among existing customers, a shift that carries different load profile implications than connection-led growth.
System losses remain an additional drag, stuck above 22% across the entire six-year dataset against an EPRA threshold now set at 16.5%, a gap of 5.57 percentage points that represents energy purchased and not billed.
