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Kenya's Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) has removed the 15,000 kilowatt-hour (kWh) monthly limit that restricted access to the dedicated e-mobility electricity tariff, allowing commercial EV charging operators to grow their power consumption without being moved into a costlier billing category.
The change was published in Gazette Notice 15188 on September 18, 2026, according to amends the electricity tariff schedule EPRA first set in 2023. The notice was signed by EPRA Acting Director-General Dr. Joseph Oketch. The headline rates are unchanged: KES 16 per kWh during standard hours and KES 8 per kWh during off-peak periods, for customers supplied by Kenya Power at 240 or 415 volts.
For operators, the practical effect is that a busy charging hub, battery-swap network or bus depot no longer risks losing the preferential rate simply because it has become successful.
What the old cap did
When EPRA introduced the e-mobility tariff in 2023, it set a monthly band of 200 to 15,000 kWh. Commercial and industrial consumption above 15,000 kWh fell under a separate category with its own tariff and demand charge. Operators crossing the line faced a penalty of up to KES 5 extra per unit.
That structure produced an odd incentive. Some operators had deliberately limited how many vehicles they served at a single station to stay under the threshold and keep the cheaper rate. Citizen Digital reported that operators had lobbied against the cap for months, citing demand that was already exceeding the monthly limit, and that EPRA had signalled the restriction could be removed by the end of the current tariff control period in June 2026.
The scale of the problem was set out by the operators themselves. BasiGo runs 17 charging stations, most of which were exceeding the old limit, and more than 20 of Spiro's 500 battery-swapping stations were in the same position.
"Unlimited" versus a rolling threshold
The amended tariff framework replaces the fixed 15,000 kWh monthly ceiling for the e-mobility category with a dynamic Energy Consumption Threshold (ECT), rather than an outright, unconditional removal of limits.
Under this revised schedule—which also applies to Commercial & Industrial (CI) and Small Commercial (SC3) consumer classes—qualifying customers must first satisfy a rolling consumption threshold. Any units consumed beyond this baseline are billed under the discounted Time-of-Use (ToU) tariff, subject to the conditions outlined in the gazette schedule.
The baseline threshold is determined by an operator's historical usage:
Existing customers: Calculated using the average consumption over the preceding six consecutive months.
New customers: Calculated using the average consumption over their first three consecutive months.
In practice, this mechanism replaces a static, uniform cap with a personalized, rolling baseline tied to each operator's actual demand. While consumption above this baseline continues to receive preferential discounted rates, access remains governed by the specific qualifications, time windows, and compliance conditions stipulated in the official gazette notice.
Off-peak rules and other adjustments
The off-peak rate is the part of the tariff designed to move charging demand to periods when the grid is less loaded. Off-peak on weekdays runs from 10pm to 6am. On Saturdays and public holidays it covers midnight to 8am and 2pm to midnight, and the whole of Sunday is off-peak. The KES 8 rate represents a 50 per cent discount on the energy charge, a structure in place since 2023.
For comparison, a small business using more than 100 units a month pays KES 19 per unit, and a household in the same band pays KES 18.57. Those are energy charges only and exclude pass-through costs, taxes and levies.
The same notice made several other changes:
Small commercial, e-mobility and industrial customers in categories CI1 to CI7 will have their consumption threshold calculated from the average of their first three months of billing, rather than a fixed number.
Businesses in those categories that operate at full capacity around the clock can qualify for a 5% discount on off-peak rates, once Kenya Power verifies their output.
Net metering and "power dumping" are formally defined for the first time. Customers who feed surplus renewable power into the grid are credited for half of what they export, and power pushed into the grid without prior written approval is billed at the full base tariff, even where a net-metering agreement exists.
The changes apply retroactively from July 1, 2025. EPRA has not issued enforcement notices or retroactive billing advisories under the new dumping definition, and the notice gives no stated justification for the e-mobility change.
The demand behind the decision
EPRA's move follows a steep rise in e-mobility electricity use. E-mobility consumption rose 300 per cent to 5.04 GWh in the year to June 2025, from 1.26 GWh, with 69 customers on the tariff at that point.
Drawing on Kenya Power and EPRA data, recent figures show:
E-mobility electricity sales grew more than 113-fold in under three years, from 13,500 kWh in July 2023 to more than 1.5 million kWh in April 2026.
Annual consumption in 2025 reached 8,433,437 kWh, up 188% from 2,922,692 kWh in 2024. Revenue from EV charging rose to KES 125.9 million from KES 64.8 million.
EPRA's own statistics show e-mobility consumption grew 152.49 per cent in July to December 2025 against the same period a year earlier, from 1.81 GWh to 4.57 GWh. That is still only 0.08 per cent of Kenya's total electricity consumption, though it is the fastest-growing customer category the regulator tracks.
Cumulative e-mobility revenue for Kenya Power stood at KES 382 million over 34 months, with Nairobi accounting for 71 per cent.
On the vehicle side, Registered EVs rising to 24,754 in 2025 from 796 in 2022, driven largely by electric motorcycles, buses and fleet vehicles in urban areas.
The same report cited earlier Kenya Power figures showing motorcycles at 62 per cent of the electric vehicles then on the road. Charging infrastructure has grown more slowly: The Electric Mobility Association of Kenya as estimating about 300 charging points nationally as of June 2025, with Kenya Power adding a 45-station rollout across six counties plus sites in Voi, Sabaki and other corridor towns.
What operators say it enables
Moses Nderitu, vice president of the Electric Mobility Association of Kenya and managing director of BasiGo Kenya, said the additional headroom would let operators expand infrastructure to serve motorbikes, vans and private EVs, not only vehicles of their own brands. That would matter for a market where public charging remains thin relative to fleet growth.
For Kenya Power removing the disincentive to exceed 15,000 kWh is expected to steer more charging demand onto the utility's metered network rather than private generation or informal arrangements. The same report noted that overnight charging adds load to a grid that already curtails significant surplus generation. The utility's financial position offers context: Kenya Power posted fiscal 2026 revenue up 8.6% to KES 238.24 billion and profit up 2.1% to KES 24.99 billion for the year ended June, with management citing the tariff structure as limiting revenue growth. The utility has not linked that comment to the e-mobility change.
The wider incentive picture
The tariff change sits alongside other state measures aimed at electric mobility. Zero-rated VAT on electric buses, bicycles, motorcycles and lithium-ion batteries, lower excise duty on selected EVs, and a reduced stamp duty for charging stations from 2027. President William Ruto has also announced that the first 100,000 electric vehicles imported into Kenya will be exempt from import duty.
Those incentives faced a scare during the Finance Bill 2026 process, when a proposal would have moved e-mobility components and solar technologies from VAT zero-rated to VAT exempt status. Parliament rejected the proposal and retained zero-rated status in the Finance Act 2026, allowing local assemblers and manufacturers to reclaim input VAT on production.
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