Abstract:
Currently, Kenya depends mainly on oil, geothermal energy and hydro resources for
electricity production, however all three have associated issues. Oil-based electricity generation
is environmentally harmful, expensive and a burden to the national trade balance. The rivers for
hydropower and their tributaries are found in arid and semi-arid areas with erratic rainfall leading to
problems of supply security, and geothermal exploitation has cost and risk issues amongst others.
Given these problems and the fact that Kenya has a significant yet underexploited potential for
photo voltaic (PV)-based power generation, the limited—although growing—exploitation of solar
PV in Kenya is explored in this paper as a means of diversifying and stabilising electricity supply.
The potential for integration of PV into the Kenyan electricity generation mix is analysed together
with the sociotechnical, economic, political, and institutional and policy barriers, which limit PV
integration. We argue that these barriers can be overcome with improved and more robust policy
regulations, additional investments in research and development, and improved coordination of the
use of different renewable energy sources. Most noticeably, storage solutions and other elements of
flexibility need to be incorporated to balance the intermittent character of electricity generation based
on solar PV
