Country Update Report for Kenya 1995-1999

Abstract

The power sector in Kenya has been going through legal, institutional and financial restructuring in order to obtain sufficient funds for the planned investment. The main target is to make the electric power adequately available and reliable in order to revitalize the economy. These reforms stared in the early 1990s. Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) has continued generating from the Olkaria East power station and carrying out exploration work on behalf of the Kenya Government in several prospects. The power industry was opened to Independent power Producers (IPPs). Two IPPs installed two diesel plants with a total capacity of 87.5MW and two others signed Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) to build a 64MW geothermal power station at Olkaria. Geothermal power is still the cheapest base-load option and 576MW is planned from this resource in the next 18 years. It is anticipated that responsibility for this will be shared between IPPs and the Public sector. However the government will have to find ways of funding the resource assessment programme quickly to avoid slippage in the development plan.