President Uhuru Kenyatta will next week launch 310 megawatt (MW) Lake Turkana Wind Power Station in Loiyangalani, Marsabit, County, Managing Director (MD) of the Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) Fernandes Barasa has said.
The project is wet to lower electricity by almost half, from Ksh15 per Kilowatt Hour (KwH) to Ksh8 for the same.
“Wind power costs Ksh8 per Kwh compared to thermal power which costs Ksh15 per Kwh. The completion of this project, together with the 55MW we are expecting from the Garissa solar power plant, means we will be running on less diesel, even as the fuel charge goes up because of the new value added tax,” said Barasa, who spoke to Citizen TV.
The new line towards Suswa can handle up to 1200MW, more that what is generated at Lake Turkana Wind Power so that it can accommodate more generation points that may come up along the line in future.
However, the amount of power generated will be proportional to wind speed.
Read: Lake Turkana National Parks Inscribed On List Of World Heritage In Danger
The project is set to be the biggest in Africa and was partly financed by the Kenyan government (75 percent) and Spanish government (25 per cent).
The Lake Turkana Wind Power project is worth Ksh28 billion. 365 wind turbines are spread across 40,000 acres of land
The construction of the power line began in November 2015 but was delayed for reasons including including legal issues and insecurity, that saw taxpayers pay Kshh5.7 billion more.
Kenya has more than 6.5 million customers connected to the power grid and has a generation capacity of 2,351 MW and a peak demand of 1,802 MW, according to reports by the Nation.
Barasa also says that they are working on the Ethiopia-Kenya line that will facilitate regional connectivity and also bring about increase in regional trade.
In 2015, Google has announced that it was investing in the Lake Turkana Wind Power. This wasl be Google’s second clean energy investment in Africa. The first one was the Jasper Solar Power project in South Africa, where it invested more than $12 million.
Google committed $2 billion (200 billion) to support 22 clean energy projects in the world.
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