Kenya: Green Power Rules Come Rain Or Shine

When Kenya’s cellphone company Safaricom launched its solar- powered cellphone last week, it brought smiles to millions of consumers facing electricity rationing two days a week.

Kenya is facing a severe electricity shortage partly tied to inadequate rainfall. Water levels in dams producing hydroelectric power are at record lows.
East Africa’s biggest economy derives about 60% of its electricity from hydroelectric power, with the rest from geothermal and solar- thermal and diesel generators.

But that is only when water levels are optimal.

Now that dam levels are low, independent power producers who use diesel generators to supplement the national grid are doing well. And the price of electricity keeps rising.

Starting this month, electricity consumer bills show that the cost of the kilowatt hours of electricity used is almost equal to the cost component of fuel, which had not been the case before.

“We are making a big bet on renewable energy so that we are always prepared, even when the rains fail,” said Prime Minister Raila Odinga when he launched the National Task Force on Accelerated Development of Green Energy last month .

The task force’s core mandate is to identify green energy projects that would generate 2000MW of electricity by 2012.

The “road map” for the projects, whose development will be through private-public partnerships, is to be announced next month, task force officials say.

Preliminary details show the target is to develop six geothermal projects with capacity of 490MW, seven wind power projects with capacity of 810MW, several co-generation projects with capacity of 300MW and one clean coal power project with capacity of 600MW. The government is unlikely to meet the cost of developing these projects.

There is urgency. Electricity rationing is slowing the pace of Kenya’s economic recovery.

AllAfrica