Olkaria V steam-powered<\/a> plant with a capacity of 165.4MW and sitting in Naivasha\u2019s Olkaria steam fields is now complete and generating and supplying clean electricity to the national grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\nConstruction\nworks for the Sh45 billion ($450 million) steam plant kicked off in January 2017,\nmarking a three-year turnaround period from groundbreaking to completion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nfirst half of the plant went live in July 2019 with\nthe other 82.7MW following this year. President Uhuru Kenyatta is set to officially\ncommission the whole plant in coming days, according to Energy cabinet\nsecretary Charles Keter who this week hosted his Ugandan counterpart Mary Kitutu for a tour of the geothermal\nplants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A trip to the site offers a glimpse of the new plant. It hums\nsoftly as\nthe ripening fruits of three years of hard work get harvested to be savoured by\nthe whole nation. Breathing out columns of feathery white steam that can be\nseen drifting skyward, geothermal is green and clean as it is cheap and\nwholesome, providing a balanced diet for the economy\u2019s energy appetite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like\nother geothermal projects, fieldwork development for Olkaria V involved\ngathering of steam from different wells through a piped network funneling the\nvapour to the plant, to turn turbines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A\nturbine, the heart of the plant, converts steam to mechanical energy, which is\nthen passed through a generator attached to it through the rotor to produce\nelectricity. The generated power is then injected into the national grid\nthrough substations and transmission lines that transport it to homes and\nbusinesses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A\nturbine is the single most expensive equipment in the construction of a geothermal\npower plant and is made of hardened steel alloys to withstand thermal stress\nfor up to 30 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In\nthe case of the165.4MW Olkaria V plant, it has two units, each with a net\ncapacity of 82.7MW. Each unit has its own set of turbines and generators and each\nturbine stands to absorb 500 tonnes of dry steam per hour at elevated\ntemperatures of about 270 degrees Celsius, meaning the steel has to be hardened\nto withstand the heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now,\nthe new plant has raised Kenya\u2019s total capacity of steam power to over 800MW. Presently,\nthe country is ranked eighth largest producer of geothermal electricity in the\nworld and the first in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Olkaria\nV plant belongs to Kenya\u2019s largest power producer, KenGen and its construction\nwas contracted out to a consortium of two Japanese firms, Mitsubishi\nCorporation and Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems, along with a Kenyan civil\nengineering firm, H Young.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Japanese\nfirms have long cemented their spot as top builders of Kenya\u2019s geothermal power\nplants and suppliers of heavy duty equipment such as steam turbines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other\nfirms from the Far East nation with a foothold in Kenya\u2019s geothermal fields\ninclude Toyota Tsusho and Toshiba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Power\nconsumed in the Kenyan economy is a blend of different sources, largely\ngeothermal (nearly half of the generation mix), followed by hydropower, wind\nand diesel-generated electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Geothermal costs $0.08 (Sh8) per kWh on average, hydropower ($0.05), Lake Turkana wind power (\u20ac0.0853) and Garissa solar ($0.0549).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read also:<\/strong> How Kenya\u2019s Surplus Wind Power Could Recycle Hydroelectric Dams<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The story of Kenya\u2019s latest geothermal power plant to go live, Olkaria V, goes back to January 2017 when construction works took off. From the barren, rugged fields full of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8482,"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":[682,773,896,1016,1086,1140,1179],"class_list":["post-8481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environmental-responsibility","tag-geothermal","tag-h-young","tag-kengen","tag-mitsubishi","tag-olkaria-v","tag-power-plant","tag-renewables"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8481","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=8481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}