NAIROBI: Kenya Power has signed an agreement to purchase electricity from a 100MW wind farm whose construction is expected to start later this year, the nation’s sole power supplier said on Tuesday.
The electricity would be from the $300m Kipeto wind farm in the Rift Valley, expected to be built from November and take up to 24 months to finish, Kenya Power said in a statement.
The power firm said the deal would last 20 years but did not say how much it would pay Kipeto for the electricity.
Kenya relies heavily on renewables such as geothermal and hydro power, and aims to expand its installed generation capacity to about 6,700MW by 2017, from about 2,500MW now.
East Africa’s biggest economy also aims to halve bills from about $0.17per kWh to $0.18 per kWh in three to four years from now by relying more on renewables than diesel-fired power plants. Kenya uses costly diesel plants to cover supply shortfalls.
General Electric — which has invested $2m to develop the wind farm — will supply the project’s turbines.
The project has secured $233m from the US government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation, as part of the US government’s Power Africa programme.
Other investors in the project include the World Bank’s investment arm, International Finance Corporation, and Kenyan renewable energy firm Craftskills Wind Energy International.
Kenya’s Lake Turkana Wind Power project, the nation’s first major wind farm, with a capacity of 310MW, could start producing power from September 2016.
The Kenya Electricity Generating Company also plans to construct a 100MW wind power plant as part of a drive to generate 450MW in the next three years.
