Kenya's 300-Megawatt Windfarm Set to Begin Construction

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--East Africa's energy profile is developing on all fronts, from gas, oil and coal in the southern country of Mozambique to wind and hydropower in the northern country of Ethiopia. Now in Kenya, the largest economy in the region and strategically situated on the Indian coast, oil has been discovered by Tullow Oil (OTC:TUWOY) (London, England).

This coincides with the news that Africa's largest windfarm will begin construction in June near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, where wind speeds average 11 meters per second. The 300-megawatt (MW) project will use 356 Vestas Wind Systems (OTC:VWDRY) (Randers, Denmark) V52 wind turbines, each with a capacity of 850 kilowatts (kW).

The construction phase will begin in June, when risk guarantees from the Ida and Miga financial institutions from the World Bank are finalized, said Carlo Van Wageningen, head of Lake Turkana Wind Power, in which South Africa's Industrial Development Corporation (Johannesburg) has a 25% stake.

In the first phase of the $775 million project road access and improvements will be constructed on a 204-kilometer route for the trucks that will make 12,000 trips to being the materials for the project in the remote, neglected region. "We're in the middle of nowhere," Van Wageningen said. "The windfarm site resembles photos on the surface of the moon."

Another key part of the new project infrastructure is the 428-kilometer transmission line that will link the windfarm to the national grid with an additional cost of $189 million. This will be built by Isolux Corsan (Madrid, Spain) and financed by loans from the Spanish and Kenyan governments.

After seven years of studies and funding negotiations, the windfarm is expected to begin production of the first 50 MW in mid-2014 and reach the full 300-MW capacity in early 2015.

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