State-owned utility Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) on Thursday unveiled plans to add 3,000 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy to the country’s power grid over the next decade.
By utilizing geothermal and hydroelectric sources to stabilize the nation’s energy supplies and diversify away from pricey thermal sources, KenGen’s Acting Managing Director Abraham Serem stated the approach will be mostly driven by these sources.
“Our focus going forward is to secure the baseload capacity to stabilize Kenya’s energy supply, mainly from green renewable energy,” Serem said in a statement issued in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.
He disclosed that KenGen, which has an installed generation capacity of 1,904 MW, would be looking to tap into the vast potential of geothermal energy in the Rift Valley region, which is estimated to be about 10,000 MW of clean and renewable energy. “So far, we have only exploited about 0.9 gigawatts (GW) of the 10 GW of geothermal potential, and that is why a huge chunk of the additional capacity will be drawn from geothermal,” he said.
Serem stated that after receiving the necessary licenses, work will begin on two geothermal power plants in the Rift Valley: one 280 MW plant in Olkaria and another 25 MW plant in Eburru.
