Kenya Power eyes additional 331MW this year to stabilize supply

Kenya Power is planning to add 331 megawatts (MW) of power generation capacity this year to improve the stability of the national grid. The need for extra generation stems from the growing reliance on variable renewable energy (VRE) sources such as solar and wind, which currently account for 21% of Kenya's 3,213 MW total installed capacity.

This exceeds the recommended 15% capacity for VREs. Dr. Joseph Siror, Kenya Power's Managing Director, reported that Kenya has the highest VRE penetration among the 13 countries in the Eastern Africa Power Pool (EAPP), with 20.1% of its capacity. He highlighted that pre-installation of VREs had improved power quality in Kenya, but a recent mass power outage affected most parts of the country, including Nairobi.

The outage resulted from the variability of VREs causing a loss of 290MW from Olkaria and 300MW from Ethiopia. Kenya Power's strategy to stabilize the grid includes additional baseload power generation, including KenGen's Olkaria 1 (61MW), Globeleq's Menengai (35MW), Orpower's Menengai (22MW), and a 200MW plant from Ethiopia. The firm also supports the development of a 1,200MW LNG power plant to mitigate the intermittency of VREs.

Dr. Siror emphasized that a highly variable grid can lead to instability and power quality issues, making it crucial to have mechanisms to address variability, such as Battery Energy Storage Systems for solar and wind energy. Currently, Kenya has a total installed capacity of 3,402 MW, exceeding the peak demand of 2,514 MW.