Western Kenya power supply gets KenGen Boost

Kengen plans to rehabilitate the Gogo hydro-plant in Western Kenya as one way of stabilising electricity supply and minimising power outages in the region.

The exercise will see the power plant’s generation capacity increased from 2Mw to 8Mw do deal with the rising electricity demand in the area.

“KenGen is keen to rehabilitate the Gogo hydropower plant to increase its capacity,” said Kengen in its weekly report.

This comes barely a week after the electricity generator announced it plans to pump an extra 3,000mw into the national grid in ten years.

The supply is expected to come from geothermal, hydro and solar with rehabilitation of old power plants expected to bridge the gap.

Kengen said that it was keen to rehabilitate various power plants across the country.

According to the company acting CEO Abraham Serem, Kengen seeks to rehabilitate its existing power plants mainly those powered by geothermal to make them more efficient for sustainable generation.

“The board has approved a ten-year corporate strategy and we are ready to roll it out having developed a robust implementation plan to lead us in the next frontier,” he said.

Serem said that out of the upcoming 305MW geothermal projects, 280MW would come from Olkaria and 25MW from the Eburru geothermal power plants.

“The company plans to leverage on new technology to rehabilitate its oldest geothermal power plant, the 45 megawatts Olkaria and increase its generation capacity to more than 60 megawatts,” he said.

He further added that the company would continue with its commercial drilling projects in Ethiopia and Djibouti where they have already drilled several geothermal wells.

“We are happy to see our teams deliver the same level of success in other countries as we do in Olkaria where we have also drilled more than 320 geothermal wells to depths of 3,000m,”

He added that KenGen was looking to roll out an E-mobility campaign, which is aimed at leading Kenya’s transition from gasoline-powered vehicles to Electric Vehicles (EV).

This, according to him, was another way of combating climate change while solving transportation challenges in the country.

“The E-mobility project, which was launched in November 2022 is part of KenGen’s diversification ambitions in the e-mobility sector,” he said.