Kenya’s mini-grid battery tender: a firm price for batteries its own documents size two ways

At Biamadhow, one of seven solar mini-grids in a Kenyan battery tender, the specification asks for 162 kWh of new battery storage; the price schedule bidders had to complete for the same site asks for 378 kWh. At Sangailu the two documents give 274 and 252 kWh, at Shimbir Fatuma 315 and 162 kWh, and at the other four sites they agree. The buyer, Kenya’s Rural Electrification and Renewable Energy Corporation (REREC), asked for a firm lump sum, not adjusted during the contract.¹ At three of the seven sites, then, a bidder had to fix its price without the documents settling which battery REREC was buying.

REREC tendered the works as RFX No. 1000001594, in three lots awarded lot by lot, and the tender document states no contract value or budget. The plants, in Turkana, Wajir, Garissa and Mandera counties, run on solar PV with valve-regulated lead-acid batteries and a diesel generator in reserve. The works replace those batteries with a lithium-ion system and every inverter with a hybrid inverter, add solar PV, a 315 kVA step-up substation to 11 kV and a container, and remove the old equipment.¹

Bids were due on 22 June 2026.¹ As of 22 October 2026, REREC’s tender register lists no addendum, opening record or award for the tender, and its most recent list of contract awards covers July to December 2025.^{2, 3}

Bids were ranked on price: the tender that met the qualification criteria, was substantially responsive and had the lowest evaluated tender price was to be selected for award. That price was built from the price schedules, each site’s schedule carried into its lot’s summary and the lot totals into the Form of Tender. Before any price counted, the technical evaluation asked for the complete design and expected performance of each bid’s battery system and full compliance with the technical specifications for the lithium batteries, and a failure on any critical parameter made the tender non-responsive.¹ A bid’s battery design went to the technical evaluators; its price was built on the schedules’ quantities.

The solar PV figures disagree as well: the project location table prints a total of 110 kWp although its site rows add up to 190 kWp, and the three parts of the tender that give the figure differ at Lowareng and Sangailu.¹

Source: the tender document’s project location table (p. 88), summary of specific site scope (p. 93) and price schedules for each site (pp. 193 to 218).¹

Once signed, the contract ranks its documents in the order it lists them wherever they conflict or are ambiguous: the Form of Tender and Price Schedules come second, the Specification fifth. The scope table that asks for 162 kWh at Biamadhow sits in the tender’s section headed Specifications; the price schedules sit in its bills of quantities. The bills say that their item descriptions are purely for identification and “in no way” modify or supersede the detailed descriptions in the conditions of contract and the specifications, and that their quantities are “estimated and provisional”. The general conditions add that, subject to the order of precedence, the contract documents are “correlative, complementary and mutually explanatory” and the contract is read as a whole.¹ That deference is written into the very bills that hold the price schedules, the document the order of precedence puts second, so the rule that should settle the conflict leads back to the specification it was meant to outrank. Read alone, the contract’s order would put the schedule’s 378 kWh at Biamadhow above the specification’s 162 kWh; read with the bills’ own terms, the specification would govern.

The price itself is both fixed and measured. The special conditions make the contract price a firm lump sum, not adjusted during the contract. Yet the bills, whose quantities are provisional, pay on the contractor’s rates for the quantities of work actually done, and each interim certificate is valued “strictly” on the actual value of works executed and verified on site. The general conditions let the firm price move for a Change in the Facilities or where the contract provides for it, with a change priced, as far as practicable, at the rates and prices already in the contract. Each battery item in the schedules is a quantity in kWh, against which a bidder was to enter a unit price.¹ A firm total and measured payment pull opposite ways, and where the quantity itself was in doubt, the price per kWh a bidder entered was, as far as practicable, the basis for pricing any change to it.

An error in the schedules fell under two rules as well. The Tender Data Sheet says any error touching the unit price and the total price leads to disqualification, and an error of more than 1% is a major deviation; the bills say arithmetic errors are corrected, the unit rate governing, and a tender is rejected if the bidder does not accept the correction.¹ The same slip could end a bid under one section and be corrected under the other.

The time for completion is 40 weeks from the effective date, and the tender did not permit alternative completion times. Liquidated damages for late completion are 0.05% per day of the late part’s price, and the special conditions state two maximums in the same clause: “10 Percent of the final Contract Price” and “Maximum deduction for liquidated damages: 5% of contract price”. Once the maximum is reached, REREC may consider terminating the contract.¹ Which maximum applies decides both how much lateness can cost in damages and when REREC may consider ending the contract.

The financial resources the lowest evaluated bidder had to show before award, a construction cash flow and an average annual construction turnover, are each stated once, not per lot.¹ A bidder for Lot 1 alone therefore faced the same turnover and cash-flow tests as one bidding for all three lots.

Source: the tender document’s Tender Data Sheet (pp. 31 to 36), evaluation and qualification criteria (pp. 37 to 48), award limitation (pp. 91 and 220), battery specification (p. 97) and special conditions on payment and security (pp. 276 to 277).¹

Bid security, net worth and entity rules on larger storage tenders are the subject of our note on reading a storage tender from the back.

The site visit on 4 and 5 June 2026 was mandatory; its form, signed and stamped by the bidder’s and REREC’s representatives, had to be in the tender at preliminary evaluation. Bidders were to visit “to obtain all information that may be required to guide on their costing decisions and any technical requirement that might have been omitted”, and the Tender Data Sheet said the visit’s minutes would be published on REREC’s website.¹

Notes to the price schedules require all proposed equipment to be fully compatible with lithium battery systems where these are already installed and only need more capacity, and make any incompatibility the bidder’s sole responsibility. The tender’s own inventory of the seven plants lists a bank of 2 V lead-acid cells at every site and no lithium battery at any.¹ The visit was where a bidder could check whether the note applied to any plant; if it did, the cost of a mismatch with the proposed equipment sat with the bidder.

Written questions had to reach REREC by 12:00 noon on 16 June 2026; REREC said it would publish its responses on its website or send them by email the same day.¹ As of 22 October 2026, the register shows neither the site visit’s minutes nor any clarification.^{2, 3} An answer sent only by email would not show there; on the public record, the tender’s figures stand as printed.

ListingMinds, “Kenya’s mini-grid battery tender: a firm price for batteries its own documents size two ways”, 16 October 2026, updated 22 October 2026. https://www.listingminds.com/energy/field-notes/kenya-mini-grid-battery-replacement-tender