BP Report
Kenya officially launched Africa’s largest wind power plant on Friday. The project is located in Kenya’s north and already provides nearly a fifth of the country’s energy needs, report agencies.
With a 365-turbine sprawling wind farm on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana, the project provides 310 megawatts of renewable energy to the national grid of East Africa’s most dynamic economy.
It is the largest private investment in Kenya’s history.
“It’s euphoric, you’re start what was a dream, putting together the largest private sector investment in the history of a country that comprises the largest wind farm on the continent. In an area that is what you see here. And finally, you are able to generate and produce the power”, said Rizwan Fazal, Executive Director of the Lake Turkana Project.
Kenya already produces most of its energy from hydroelectric power, geo-thermal or wind power. This new plant is part of its commitment to produce 100% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.
The largest private investment in Kenya’s history, the Lake Turkana Wind Power project was beset with delays and took nearly a decade to rise from the arid landscape 600 kilometres north of Nairobi.
The turbines, scattered across Turkana’s stark lunar landscape and rocky hills, began to deliver their first electricity last September.
Their giant blades deliver 15% of Kenya’s entire installed capacity, connected to the national grid through a 428-kilometre power line.
The project lies in a natural corridor dubbed “the windiest place on earth” and promises to harness this endless power at low cost.
The nearly-50 metre turbines were engineered to handle the fierce gusts that tear through the “Turkana Corridor”, a wind tunnel that generates optimal conditions, year round.
The winds howling near constantly through the barren valley deliver double the load capacity enjoyed by similar projects in America and Europe.
“It is unprecedented. This is one of the most consistently windiest places in the world,” said Rizwan Fazal, the executive director of the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project.
A Herculean effort was needed to construct the behemoth wind farm in Kenya’s farthest extremes.
The windmills, manufactured by Danish company Vestas, had to be brought one-by-one overland from the Kenyan port of Mombasa, some 1200 kilometres away.
Each one was customised so its different segments could be packed “like Russian dolls”, the company said
The project, far more ambitious in scale than rivals elsewhere on the continent, has been closely watched as a case study of investing in renewables in Africa, where demand for energy is soaring as economies grow and populations swell. In Kenya –which relies heavily on hydropower and geothermal – power is unreliable and costly, hindering business as energy-intensive sectors such as manufacturing look to take off.
The Turkana wind farm involved years of planning and construction but the turbines went up quicker than one a day, with the last raised in March 2017, ahead of schedule.
But difficulties in financing the transmission line, being laid by state-owned power company Ketraco, and problems acquiring land, meant this landmark project didn’t connect to the grid for another 18 months – in September 2018.
“The farm was built on time. But the project can only operate if you can bring power to the client,” said Catherine Collin, East Africa head of the European Investment Bank.
The EU’s lending facility loaned $200 million for the project, which received other finance from a consortium of European and African companies
“There was a delay, there was a few difficult moments, I have to say, for everybody, but in the end we all made it,” Collin said.
Fazal said it had been “an incredible journey” but more than anything it let the world know Kenya’s untapped clean energy markets were open for business.
“It sends a very strong signal about Kenya being ripe for projects,” he said.
