The government with the support of development partners has embarked on an ambitious plan to construct a 700 megawatt High Grand Falls Dam in Eastern Kenya.
The dam which will be the fourth largest hydro-dam in Africa is projected to cost the country at least Ksh 340 billion and is expected to address rising demand for electricity in the country.
This comes a couple of weeks after the country’s high peak demand rose to the highest at 2,392mw in August from 2,149mw as more homes got connected to power.
According to the Energy Principal Secretary Alex Wachira, the ministry has already formed a technical committee on the proposed dam with works expected in the next five years.
Wachira said that the dam would address any shortfall of power imports from Ethiopia and other solar and wind generated plants in the country.
Addressing the press on the sidelines of the ongoing Sustainable Energy Conference (SEC25) in Olkaria Naivasha, the Wachira said that the funding involved land acquisition and construction.
“The dam that will cost Ksh 340B will be the fourth largest in the continent and that is why we are putting up a high-level team to finalize on how we develop the high-grand forced dam,” he said.
Wachira added that plans were at high level to upgrade various power lines mainly from Olkaria to Nairobi which would carry more load.
“One of the immediate measures we want to do is to use a conductor that can carry slightly more power than the current conductor,” he added.
He said currently 78pc of Kenyans are accessing electricity with 1.2 million homes connected to power in the last two years and plans to add another one million by end of next year.
On his part, Kengen Managing Director Peter Njenga said the power generating company is committed to pumping an extra 1,500MW into the national grid within the next ten years.
According to Njenga, this would mainly come from geothermal, wind and solar at a cost of Ksh 555 billion ($4.3b) which would be sourced through private partnership and support from development partners.
“One of my beliefs as one of the leaders in this energy sector is that if we have extra energy, it will attract other investors and our economy will grow,” he said.
German Embassy Deputy Head Alexander Fierley said that his country would continue to support Kenya in funding and capacity building towards green energy.
“The German government has invested over Ksh 75 billion in the energy sector in the country and this has contributed to generation of over 450MW,” he said.
