The Menengai geothermal power project is at last showing signs of yielding fruit after billions of shillings were invested in it. With this development, the supply of geothermal power in the country is set to increase.
During the Geothermal Association of Kenya (GAK) annual general meeting held at Hotel Cathay in Nakuru County on Friday, experts said the project will be launched within three months. The project, which recently received support from the African Development Bank (AfDB), is now expected to generate enough power to supply about half a million households and over 500,000 businesses.
PREPARATIONS COMPLETE
Geothermal Development Company (GDC) General Manager for Resource Development Cornel Ofwona told Nation that preparations to launch the mega power project which is expected to generate about 105MW of power are almost complete.
“We have signed a funding agreement with the African Development Bank and in this first quarter we will be breaking ground. It has taken time but launching of the project is coming really soon,” Mr Ofwona said
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When are power bills coming down Mr propagandist?
There’s what the ordinary Kenyan is interested in.
Increasing capacity to enrich tenderprenuers without it having any impact on the cost of power is useless.
And we don’t want to be fooled by ‘reliable power’ hogwash.
There’s nowhere it’s written that it’s impossible to supply cheap reliable power.
Last year we were told that they were high coz of the draught, this year it has rained more than enough. They are now increasing in the
name of price harmonization, where did we go wrong as Kenyans? Tulikosea nani?
For the first time in Africa the geothermal steam will be available for free to local communities for milk processing units.
The Containerized Dairy Unit at at our Menengai Geothermal Project is the first of its kind in Africa. The milk processing unit uses the heat from geothermal water for milk pasteurization. #geothermalbenefits
The Kenya we have now needs a radical to get back to its feet.The government is currently too obsessed with mega project and forgets about things that matter.Its a shame ,a big shame that the government is auctioning the country to anyone with money.
Geothermal will always be more expensive because of the prospective nature of finding the site and building a plant. Not all the wells that are sunk find a spot with maximum heat so to recover those costs, we have to pay more.
Not really. Iceland geothermal power plants are paid 3.97 cents per kilowatt hour.If this was applied in Kenya, it would be the second cheapest source of power after Hydro(2.5 cents per kilowatt hour) Currently I see a huge variation in figures.From 4 .5 cents to 7 cents.I hope it will be closer to 4.5 cents.
Geothermal is cheap if you have an attractive prospective site.There is a reason why Olkaria has gotten the most attention and the Lake Magadi area(which also has hot springs and fumaroles) has gotten little.
That’s true but the successive governments have ignored some very basic things that don’t require rocket science to implement.
For instance now the weather is favourable we should be having water dams being prepared to serve areas that experience unfavourable weather.
Some water storage options for farming like a 6m X 6m by 1 m depth pond lined with dam liner costs less than 32k and holds 36,000 litres to start with from which one can expand.
Iceland don’t have to dig deep because the lavaflow is very close to the surface, at Olkaria the average distance a pipe is sunk is 1km below the ground.
Actually, the Kenyan ones are shallower. Olkaria 2 and Olkaria 5 are relatively shallow. Usually between 1.5 and 2km deep. https://orkustofnun.is/gogn/unu-gtp-sc/UNU-GTP-SC-10-0407.pdf
Icelandic wells go up to 4km. Depth is not a factor of production. Iceland drills hottest hole to tap into energy of molten magma | New Scientist
Also Olkaria 2 and 4 were basically built for free as the money for both came from a Japanese grant(The only condition was that they use Japanese equipment.That is why the turbines are made by Toshiba) so the power should be cheap.However, our transmission losses, plus the idiocy of Kenya Power which was known to favor the diesel power plants over cheaper sources during peak time(a phenomenon ERC often criticized) ,meaning that quite often, the geothermal power plants do not run at the full 89% they are supposed to.
But the cost of power in Kenya is mainly due to taxes.In as much as I support taxes on Petroleum, I find the ones on Electricity nonsensical.52% of your power bill is taxes and those taxes do not change except the fuel sucharge and the forex
Our grids very inefficient that translates to high bills cause we lose up power which consumers still pay for.
Better high yield power lines and modern transformers will truly reduce the losses that the incompetent KPLC has failed to resolve… maybe we need another power supplier to even out the field.