Infrastructure

KenGen Completes Work on Sh34bn Olkaria Power Plant

Olkaria 1 Unit 6 will inject 83MW into the national grid.

Updated on

May 13, 2022

Olkaria V geothermal plant — Contractors assemble steel for the construction of the Olkaria V Geothermal power plant. PHOTO | REUTERS

The Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) has built a new geothermal power plant in Naivasha – raising its stock of green energy by 83 megawatts.

Dubbed Olkaria 1 Unit 6, the plant will boost KenGen’s geothermal power capacity which now stands at 533.8MW following the completion of Olkaria 1, 4, and 5 plants.

“KenGen is planning to add another 720MW to the national grid, mainly from green sources,” President Uhuru Kenyatta said during the plant’s groundbreaking in Dec. 2018.

The Olkaria 1 Unit 6 project, which is funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the European Investment Bank, has been undertaken by Japan’s Marubeni Corporation at Sh34 billion.

According to KenGen, the geothermal power unit is undergoing tests ahead of official commissioning next month as Kenya seeks to raise its stock of green energy.

The company is exploring more geothermal power in the Eburru area and rehabilitating the existing geothermal power plants in Olkaria, about 100km northwest of Nairobi.

KenGen has an installed capacity of 1,631 MW with the leading energy type being hydro (818MW) followed by geothermal at 534MW, thermal at 253.5MW, and wind at 25.5MW.

The company expects to generate 2,029MW from geothermal by 2028.

An extra 90MW sourced from hydropower, 410MW from wind, and 40MW of solar energy is expected to raise the firm’s total capacity to 4,200MW – nearly double the country’s current total installed capacity of 2,336MW.

In 2019, Kenya was ranked fifth globally in an annual Bloomberg index measuring investments and opportunities in clean energy, highlighting the country’s position as the centre of renewable energy in Africa.

The country scored 2.52 on the BloombergNEF 2019 Climatescope index, behind China (2.59), Brazil (2.76), Chile (2.85) and India (2.93).

Kenya’s rise into the global top five was backed by the rising capacity of solar, wind, and geothermal, which now account for about 65% of the country’s energy sources.