Olkaria III -- A Successful Technology Transfer to Kenya

Abstract

The Olkaria III Geothermal Power Project, including the well field and the power plant was developed by a team from Ormat International, Inc., with the support of Kenya Electricity Generating Co. (KenGen) and other Kenyan and international specialists. The Project utilizes Ormat’s field proven proprietary binary technology in Phase I of the Project, which reached an 8 MW early generation operation in August 2000 and a net capacity of 12 MW in December 2000 and was further optimized to the present 13.6 MW net by September 2003. It is operated entirely by a local team of 22 highly educated, well motivated and fully trained Kenyan employees with no resident expatriates. The Project has operated for 6 years at over 95% availability at a high load factor of over 96%, demonstrating a very succesful technology transfer from Ormat to its Kenyan counterparts. When the 48 MW Phase II is completed, the technical and management team will be increased to a total of 45 members.