The Garissa solar plant<\/a> is Kenya\u2019s first utility-scale solar project. Kenya sits along the Equator and enjoys a warm tropical climate all year round.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBecause of the steady wind speeds and sunlight the country\u2019s northern region receives, the average output level (capacity factor) in power generation is quite high by global standards, according to energy experts. This effectively positions investors to generate more electricity for sale, cutting the waiting period for them to return their equity and repay project loans. This is unlike in Europe, America and parts of Asia where capacity factors are much lower due to relatively less wind speeds and sun radiation on account of their weather patterns and geographical locations. And so investors have to charge higher to recover their costs, service debts on time and make a profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt all boils down to variations in capacity factors. The capacity factor for Kenya\u2019s Turkana wind farm is high at about 70 percent due to very good wind speeds, in Europe that drops to about 25-30 percent, less than half our output,\u201d said Rizwan Fazal, the executive director at Lake Turkana Wind Power Ltd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\nmeans a similar capacity plant with equal investment costs in Europe will\ngenerate less than half what we do, and, therefore, in order to defray the\nfixed upfront costs, they need to charge much higher for the generated wind\nelectricity,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Again,\nmost of the wind farms in Europe are offshore, planted in the sea where wind\nspeeds are a bit steadier but whose construction is more expensive than on\nland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\ncomparatively higher wind and solar production costs in Europe have in the past\nseen European governments offer investors subsidies and other incentives to\npull them onto the green energy bandwagon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like\nthe Turkana wind farm, the Garissa solar park has equally returned impressive\nyields, occasionally hitting capacity factors of about 80 per cent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turkana\nwind farm receives steady wind speeds throughout the year, making it the best\nlocation in the region for wind power harvesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\nlies in the Turkana Corridor, a low-level jet stream from the Indian Ocean that\ncreates strong and predictable winds at an average of 11.4 metres per second\n(m\/s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The wind speeds are fanned by the presence of Mt. Kulal to the North and Mt. Nyiru to the South, which acts to produce a venturi effect \u2013 accelerating the winds flowing through the project site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Garissa solar farm, alongside the Turkana wind power, has significantly cut the use of expensive diesel generators as cheaper alternatives during dry periods when hydropower production drops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though\nsteady, the Turkana wind plant generates maximum electricity in the evenings since\nthe area winds pick momentum during nightfall and persist throughout the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But\ndespite Kenya achieving the grid parity, consumer power bills have remained\nstubbornly high, in what experts attribute to low demand in the economy that\nhas seen distributor Kenya Power pay investors of idle plants for power not\ndispatched, mostly thermal diesel generators. Kenya\u2019s reserve margin stands at\nabout 30 percent, twice the average global rate, pointing to more than excess\ninstalled capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most\npower purchase agreements (PPAs) with independent power producers bind Kenya\nPower to \u201ctake or pay\u201d the electricity, meaning that power station investors\nare paid even if the electricity is not taken for whatever reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The payouts come in form of capacity charges and deemed\/curtailed charges paid for by homes and businesses through their monthly bills to cover the developers\u2019 fixed expenses on their power project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read also<\/strong>: Safaricom Opens Talks To Supply Electricity<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Globally, the concept of grid parity has been hailed as the holy grail of the transition to renewables. Constructing solar and wind farms whose consumer tariffs match or fall below…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environmental-responsibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}