Kenya unveils plan to add 3,000 MW of renewable energy to national power grid

Nairobi, Kenya | Xinhua | Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen), a state-owned utility, on Thursday announced plans to add 3,000 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy to the national power grid in the next ten years.

KenGen’s Acting Managing Director Abraham Serem said the strategy will be largely driven by deploying geothermal and hydropower sources to stabilize the country’s energy sources, thereby diversifying away from expensive thermal 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 geothermal potential, and that is why a huge chunk of the additional capacity will be drawn from geothermal,” he said.

Serem added that construction of a 280-MW geothermal power plant in Olkaria as well as another 25-MW plant in Eburru, both located in the Rift Valley, will commence immediately after getting the requisite approvals.