Kenya · Infrastructure
How Kenya’s licensed captive power capacity changed by technology
Kenya’s Economic Survey puts licensed captive capacity at a provisional 427.2 MW in 2025, up from 133.5 MW in 2018. Solar reached 122.2 MW and waste heat recovery 83.5 MW. The table counts licensed capacity for facilities generating power for their own use.
Sources checked
2025 provisional
Shared scale · 0 MW to 122.2 MW
2018
Shared scale · 0 MW to 122.2 MW
Switch between the two survey years. Values are megawatts of capacity.
Solar accounted for most of the latest increase
Licensed captive solar rose from 88.2 MW in 2024 to 122.2 MW in 2025. Total licensed captive capacity rose by 36.8 MW, from 390.4 to 427.2 MW. Solar accounted for 34.0 MW of that increase, with the remaining 2.8 MW from hydro in the survey table. Source 1
Two industrial energy sources helped reshape the capacity mix
Waste heat recovery first appears with 28.5 MW in 2021 and reached 83.5 MW in 2022, where it remained through 2025. Bagasse rose from 15.7 MW in 2020 to 60.2 MW in 2021. The two categories together accounted for 143.7 MW in the 2025 survey. Source 1
Several technologies changed little over the full period
Coal stayed at 30 MW and cogeneration at 32 MW from 2018 to 2025. The geothermal line remained at 3.7 MW. In contrast, biomass increased from 1.5 MW to 19.5 MW and thermal capacity rose from 18.5 MW to 42.9 MW across the two endpoint years. Source 1
Capacity measures installed capability within the survey scope
A megawatt measures the rated capacity to generate electricity. It does not establish how many megawatt-hours a facility generated during the year. These records also cover a specific licensed group of autoproducers. They should be kept separate from total grid capacity or estimates of all embedded generation. Source 1 Source 2