[{"t":"What you actually pay for on a Kenyan electricity bill","d":"A domestic power bill is at least six separate charges stacked on top of each other. Here is what each line does, and which ones move month to month.","u":"/kenya-electricity-tariff-explained","c":"Policy & Regulation","cs":"policy","dt":"2026-08-13","df":"13 August 2026","g":"Tariffs KPLC EPRA Households","k":"most complaints about a power bill are really complaints about one line on it. the trouble is that the line changes name and size every month, and it sits among five or six others that behave completely differently. reading the bill in order, rather than looking only at the total, makes the movement much easier to explain. ## the fixed charge does not care how much you use the first item is a…"},{"t":"How geothermal power works in the Rift Valley","d":"Steam from two kilometres underground now carries a large share of Kenya's baseload. The geology behind it is specific, and it is not easily copied.","u":"/how-geothermal-power-works-in-the-rift-valley","c":"Renewables","cs":"renewables","dt":"2026-08-11","df":"11 August 2026","g":"Geothermal Olkaria KenGen Baseload","k":"solar and wind get most of the attention, but the most consequential thing about kenya's generation mix is that a large share of it comes from a resource that does not care whether the sun is up or the wind is blowing. understanding why that is possible here, and why it is not possible in most places, is worth a few minutes. ## three things have to occur together a geothermal field needs a heat…"},{"t":"What a mini-grid actually costs to run","d":"Building a village mini-grid is the easy part. The operating economics decide whether it is still generating power in year seven.","u":"/what-a-mini-grid-actually-costs-to-run","c":"Off-Grid & Access","cs":"off-grid","dt":"2026-08-08","df":"8 August 2026","g":"Mini-grids Energy access Tariffs Marsabit","k":"a mini-grid is a small generation and distribution system serving a defined community, disconnected from the national network. the construction phase attracts the funding, the photographs and the launch event. the years afterwards decide whether it becomes infrastructure or scrap. ## the cost that arrives on a schedule solar panels degrade slowly and predictably. inverters last a long time…"},{"t":"Pay-as-you-go solar, explained as a lending business","d":"The panels are the visible part. What made solar home systems spread across East Africa was consumer credit with a remote off-switch.","u":"/pay-as-you-go-solar-explained","c":"Off-Grid & Access","cs":"off-grid","dt":"2026-08-05","df":"5 August 2026","g":"PAYG Solar Consumer finance Mobile money","k":"a solar home system costs more than most rural households can pay at once and less than a bank will bother to lend against. pay-as-you-go exists to bridge that gap, and understanding it as a credit product rather than a solar product explains almost everything about how these companies behave. ## the mechanism a customer pays a deposit and takes the system home. the unit contains a controller…"},{"t":"How cross-border power trade actually works in East Africa","d":"A transmission line between two countries is a hedge against each country's own weather. That is the whole argument, and it is a strong one.","u":"/how-cross-border-power-trade-works-in-east-africa","c":"Power & Grid","cs":"power-grid","dt":"2026-07-30","df":"30 July 2026","g":"Transmission Interconnectors Regional trade EAPP","k":"every national grid is sized for its own worst day. that is expensive, because the worst day happens rarely and the capacity built to survive it sits idle the rest of the year. interconnection is the attempt to stop every country paying for that insurance separately. ## the basic argument two neighbouring systems rarely have their bad days simultaneously. one country's hydro reservoirs are low…"},{"t":"LPG versus charcoal: what drives the cooking fuel shift","d":"Households do not switch cooking fuel because of a health campaign. They switch when the cash flow of switching stops being punishing.","u":"/lpg-versus-charcoal-the-cooking-fuel-shift","c":"Oil & Gas","cs":"oil-gas","dt":"2026-07-24","df":"24 July 2026","g":"LPG Clean cooking Charcoal Households","k":"compared per unit of useful heat, cooking gas usually beats charcoal. households know this. many keep buying charcoal anyway, and the reason has almost nothing to do with the per-unit comparison. ## the cash flow problem charcoal is bought in whatever quantity today's money allows. a small tin costs a small amount. there is no minimum purchase and no deposit, and the expense scales down smoothly…"},{"t":"Where electricity disappears between plant and plug","d":"Every utility loses part of what it generates. Separating the physics from the billing failures is the first step in fixing either.","u":"/where-electricity-disappears-between-plant-and-plug","c":"Power & Grid","cs":"power-grid","dt":"2026-07-18","df":"18 July 2026","g":"Losses Distribution Metering Utilities","k":"a utility generates or buys a quantity of electricity and bills for a smaller quantity. the gap is reported as system losses, and it is routinely discussed as a single number. it is actually two entirely different problems that happen to share a line in the accounts. ## technical loss is physics current flowing through a conductor heats it. that heat is energy that left the system without doing…"},{"t":"Why electric boda bodas swap batteries instead of charging them","d":"For a rider who earns by the trip, charging time is lost income. Battery swapping is an answer to that specific problem.","u":"/electric-boda-bodas-and-the-battery-swap-model","c":"E-Mobility","cs":"mobility","dt":"2026-07-11","df":"11 July 2026","g":"E-mobility Battery swapping Boda boda Charging","k":"most arguments about electric two-wheelers focus on range. for a boda boda rider that is the wrong variable. the rider's daily distance is usually well within what a modest battery delivers. the problem is what happens when it runs out at two in the afternoon. ## downtime is the real cost a rider earning per trip cannot afford three hours plugged into a wall during working hours. a petrol…"},{"t":"How an African power project gets financed","d":"Between an idea and a working plant sit a power purchase agreement, a pile of due diligence and about four years. Here is the sequence.","u":"/how-an-african-power-project-gets-financed","c":"Finance & Deals","cs":"finance","dt":"2026-06-27","df":"27 June 2026","g":"Project finance PPA IPP Development finance","k":"an independent power producer is not really selling electricity. it is selling a twenty-year contractual promise, and then borrowing against it. once that is clear, the rest of the structure follows logically. ## stage one: development, at the developer's risk someone identifies a site, secures land rights, commissions resource studies, runs environmental and social assessments, and applies for…"},{"t":"Carbon credits, explained for energy projects","d":"A credit is a claim that something did not happen. Whether that claim is worth anything depends entirely on the counterfactual behind it.","u":"/carbon-credits-explained-for-energy-projects","c":"Climate","cs":"climate","dt":"2026-06-19","df":"19 June 2026","g":"Carbon markets Offsets Clean cooking Additionality","k":"carbon credits attach a revenue stream to emissions that were avoided rather than to a product that was sold. that inversion is the source of both their usefulness and every serious criticism made of them. ## what a credit is one credit represents one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent that was either kept out of the atmosphere or removed from it. it is issued by a registry against a methodology…"}]