Kenya Power is betting on additional power this year from baseload power plants to strengthen national grid stability which is being affected by increasing use of unstable energy source like solar and wind.
According to Kenya Power Managing Director Dr Joseph Siror, Variable Renewable Energy (VREs) sources currently make up 21pc of the country’s total installed capacity of 3,213 megawatts which is above recommended capacity of 15%.
Among the 13 countries making up the Eastern Africa Power Pool (EAPP), Kenya has the highest use of VREs.
“If you look at the VRE penetration, Egypt has 10.4%, Ethiopia is at 5.3%, Tanzania is at 1.2%, Kenya is at 20.1% and Uganda is at 4%. And indeed, if you look at power quality, pre-installation of these VREs, the power quality in Kenya was very good,” said Siror.
This comes on the backdrop of a mass power outage two weeks which was affected most parts of the country including Nairobi, Coast, Mt Kenya and parts of central rift.
The power utility says widespread power outage at the end of last month was as a result of the variability which led to a loss of 290MW of power from Olkaria and 300MW from Ethiopia.
“When we lost a generation f 290MW, though the demand was quite high, then of course it led to another one collapsing. When the two generations went out, the 290MW and the 300MW from Ethiopia then the grid could not withstand it,” he noted.
Kenya Power now says the additional generation of baseload power expected this year including KenGen’s 61MW Olkaria 1, Globeleq’s 35MW from Menengai, Orpower 22 35MW plant in Menengai and 200MW from Ethiopia will help stabilize the grid and reduce reliant on VREs.
The firm is also backing the generation of 1,200MW from LNG Power Plant to mitigate intermittency from VREs.
“Because of the intermittent of VREs, and their increasing quantum in the grid, the need for this plant is very imperative. A grid is very unstable when there is a lot of variability and one will always require to have a mechanism of mitigating that variability and the variability at worst can cause a grid collapse and at best it can cause power quality challenges,” said Siror.
Dr Siror further backs investment in Battery Energy Storage Systems for solar and wind to support stabilization of the grid incase of variability.
Currently, Kenya has a total installed capacity of 3,402MW against a peak demand of 2514MW.
