Kenya to build Africa's biggest windfarm

With surging demand for power and blackouts common across the continent, Africa is looking to solar, wind and geothermal technologies to meet its energy needs
Xan Rice, guardian.co.uk 27 Jul 09;

One of the hottest places in the world is set to become the site of Africa's most ambitious venture in the battle against global warming.

Some 365 giant wind turbines are to be installed in desert around Lake Turkana in northern Kenya – used as a backdrop for the film The Constant Gardener – creating the biggest windfarm on the continent. When complete in 2012, the £533m project will have a capacity of 300MW, a quarter of Kenya's current installed power and one of the highest proportions of wind energy to be fed in a national grid anywhere in the world.

Until now, only north African countries such as Morocco and Egypt have harnessed wind power for commercial purposes on any real scale on the continent. But projects are now beginning to bloom south of the Sahara as governments realise that harnessing the vast wind potential can efficiently meet a surging demand for electricity and ending blackouts.

Already Ethiopia has commissioned a £190m, 120MW farm in Tigray region, representing 15% of the current electricity capacity, and intends to build several more. Tanzania has announced plans to generate at least 100MW of power from two projects in the central Singida region, more than 10% of the country's current supply. In March, South Africa, whose heavy reliance on coal makes its electricity the second most greenhouse-gas intensive in the world, became the first African country to announce a feed-in tariff for wind power, whereby customers generating electricity receive a cash payment for selling that power to the grid.

Kenya is trying to lead the way. Besides the Turkana project, which is being backed by the African Development Bank, private investors have proposed establishing a second windfarm near Naivasha, the well-known tourist town. And in the Ngong hills near Nairobi, the Maasai herders and elite long-distance athletes used to braving the frigid winds along the escarpment already have towering company: six 50m turbines from the Danish company Vestas that were erected last month and will add 5.1MW to the national grid from August. Another dozen turbines will be added at the site in the next few years.

Christopher Maende, an engineer from the state power company KenGen, which is running the Ngong farm and testing 14 other wind sites across the country, said local residents and herders were initially worried that noise from the turbines would scare the animals.

"Now they are coming to admire the beauty of these machines," he said.

Kenya's electricity is already very green by global standards. Nearly three-quarters of KenGen's installed capacity comes from hydropower, and a further 11% from geothermal plants, which tap into the hot rocks a mile beneath the Rift Valley to release steam to power turbines.

Currently fewer than one-in-five Kenyans has access to electricity but demand is rising quickly, particularly in rural areas and from businesses. At the same time, increasingly erratic rainfall patterns and the destruction of key water catchment areas have affected hydroelectricity output. Low water levels caused the country's largest hydropower dam to be shut down last month.

As a short-term measure KenGen is relying on imported fossil fuels, such as coal and diesel. But within five years the government wants to drastically reduce the reliance on hydro by adding 500MW of geothermal power and 800MW of wind energy to the grid.

Not only are they far greener options than coal or diesel, but the country's favourable geology and meteorology make them cheaper alternatives over time. The possibility of selling carbon credits to companies in the industrialised world is an added financial advantage.

"Kenya's natural fuel should come from the wind, hot underground rock and the sun, whose potential has barely even been considered," said Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the United Nations Environment Programme. "After the initial capital costs this energy is free."

The Dutch consortium behind the Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) project has leased 66,000 hectares of land on the eastern edge of the world's largest permanent desert lake. The volcanic soil is scoured by hot winds that blow consistently year round through the channel between the Kenyan and Ethiopian highlands.

According to LTWP, which has an agreement to sell its electricity to the Kenya Power & Lighting Company, the average wind speed is 11metres per second, akin to "proven reserves" in the oil sector, said Carlo Van Wageningen, chairman of the company.

"We believe that this site is one of the best in the world for wind," he said. If the project succeeds, the company estimates that there is the potential for the farm to generate a further 2,700MW of power, some of which could be exported.

First, however, there are huge logistical obstacles to overcome. The remote site of Loiyangalani is nearly 300 miles north of Nairobi. Transporting the turbines will require several thousand truck journeys, as well as the improvement of bridges and roads along the way. Security is also an issue as the region is known bandit country, and many locals are armed with AK-47 assault rifles.

LTWP also has to construct a 266-mile transmission line and several substations to connect the windfarm to the national grid. It has promised to provide electricity to the closest local towns, currently powered by generators.
The greening of Africa

At the end of 2008, Africa's installed wind power capacity was only 593MW. But that is set to change fast. Egypt has declared plans to have 7,200MW of wind electricity by 2020, meeting 12% of the country's energy needs. Morocco has a 15% target over the same period. South Africa and Kenya have not announced such long-term goals, but with power shortages and wind potential of up to 60,000MW and 30,000MW respectively, local projects are expected to boom. With the carbon credit market proving strong incentives for investment other types of renewable energy are also set to take off. Kenya is planning to quickly expanding its geothermal capacity, and neighbouring Rift Valley countries up to Djibouti are examining their own potential. As technology improves and costs fall, solar will also enter the mix. Germany has already publicised plans to develop a €400bn solar park in the Sahara.

"Ultimately for Africa solar is the answer, although [costs mean] we may still be decades away," said Herman Oelsner, president of the African Wind Energy Association.

Kenya reaps the wind
Tristan McConnell, Reuters 4 Aug 09;

NGONG, Kenya (Global Post) — From a distance the highlands look like a giant fist resting on the landscape, a series of knuckles forming the peaks of the Ngong Hills. From the top of the escarpment Kenya's capital Nairobi spreads out to the east, the breathtaking Great Rift Valley to the west.

Maasai herdsmen shepherd their cattle across the hilltop pastures, some dressed in traditional colorful red tartan-print blankets, beads round their necks, earlobes hung with heavy rings, a stick in one hand and leather sandals on their feet.

Every afternoon the gentle morning breeze that sweeps up from the Rift Valley grows into a strong wind and by nightfall it has become a blustering gale. Now, Kenya's government hopes to harness that power. Next month the country's first wind farm will open on the top of the Ngong Hills.

For now the six 165-foot tall steel shafts with their 82-foot fiberglass blades are shiny white, stark against the horizon, and motionless.

Jackson Odhiambo, 30, is an IT technician working for a company that hopes to bring fiber optic cables and broadband internet to Kenya for the first time later this year. One recent morning he had driven up to take a look at the turbines that now watch over the hills.

"These will generate power which is good and with wind it doesn't pollute the air or disturb people with the noise. There are a lot of advantages," he said.

"Kenyans won't mind the landscape being changed because there is such a need for cheap power," Odhiambo went on, adding, "and they look nice."

Nearby a bunch of cows nibbled at the grass beneath one of the gleaming white towers. Their owner — a herdsman who had walked all the way from neighboring Tanzania with his cattle — had no idea what the strange sculptures were for but thought they looked great, a glimpse of the future.

Hezron Ng'iela certainly thinks the wind turbines are the future. He is the senior projects engineer for wind and renewable energy at KenGen, the state-owned power company responsible for the wind farm at Ngong and, if tests go well, at 11 more sites across Kenya.

"We have in Kenya a lot of wind potential, probably enough to sustain us for a number of years if we exploit it properly," Ng'iela enthused. "Right now we are gathering data with a view to developing other wind farms in the future." That will include a further seven turbines on top of the Ngong Hills.

"We are going more and more green," he said excitedly.

The $15 million pilot project funded by the Belgian government started in April last year. The turbines chosen were the largest ones KenGen could manage. The towers and blades were shipped in from Europe then loaded onto trucks which had to navigate Kenya's appalling roads until they reached the foot of the Ngong Hills themselves.

From there a precipitous dirt track wiggles its way up to the top. Quite simply bigger turbines on bigger trucks could not have made the journey. "The limiting factor is our infrastructure," Ng'iela said.

The blades begin to turn when wind speeds reach 13 feet per second, at 40 feet per second the turbines are running at maximum capacity. If the wind blows too strong — say 82 feet per second — the turbine shuts down.

Once operational each of the turbines will produce up to 850 kilowatts of power, meaning another 5.1 megawatts will feed into the national grid. It may not sound like much but in rural Kenya where electricity consumption is low each turbine can produce enough power to supply as many as 1,000 homes.

Kenya — like much of Africa — is facing a looming power crisis with regular power cuts becoming more and more frequent. Today in Kenya potential production slightly outweighs demand but that will change fast.

If everything works at full capacity, Kenya's various hydroelectric, geothermal and thermal plants produce 1,200 megawatts while Kenya's citizens use 1,050 MW. But with global warming causing the rains to fail with depressing regularity and deforestation also reducing the flow of rivers, hydropower generation is down.

"Kenya is facing a crisis of power generation," said Christian Lambrechts, program officer at the United Nations Environment Program in Nairobi, "and electricity is key to economic development."

Demand is increasing by around 6 percent per year partly thanks to population growth and partly because of efforts to expand the national grid. The government hopes to connect another 150,000 homes a year to the network. In some rural areas only one in five homes have electricity.

It is that desperate need that perhaps explains why Kenya's first wind farm being built on top of one of its natural wonders has not caused an outcry. Wind farms in Europe are frequently greeted with a not-in-my-backyard attitude. But here, Ng'iela said, "because of the shortages people want electricity, so they welcome this."