Sh15bn wind power plant up for auction in land row
Youths block the Nakuru-Nairobi highway last year to oppose the Kinangop wind project which has since stalled. PHOTO | FILE
The 38 turbines for the cancelled Sh15 billion wind farm in Kinangop are being auctioned after the developers failed to repay money borrowed for the project that ran into land compensation headwinds.
Kinangop Wind Park (KWP) was put under receivership after pulling the plug on the 60.8 megawatt (MW) project in February due to depletion of funds on delays and hostilities from the local community in Kinangop, Nyandarua County.
The receiver managers have now invited bids from interested buyers to purchase 38 wind turbine generators and accessories made by US conglomerate General Electric. Each turbine has a capacity of 1.6 MW.
“The receivers would now like to invite interested parties to submit their non-binding expression of interest in the purchase of the assets,” a notice in the dailies says. Each of the turbine generators put on the market comes with three blades, three tower sections, a nacelle, a hub, and a pad mounted transformer.
The wind farm had received the support of Norwegian private equity firm Norfund, South African asset manager Old Mutual and Sydney-based fund Macquarie. The electricity from the project was set to light 150,000 homes by 2018.
Trouble began in June 2014 when protests disrupted compensation negotiations between affected landowners and the energy firm. Talks between communities, county and national government officials were unsuccessful, leading the KWP to halt the project.
Local farmers also opposed the project, saying they would be forced to sell their land and that the turbines could cause health problems, which the developer denied.
The project’s collapse is a setback for Kenya’s drive to increase its power generation capacity by 5,000 MW in the five years to end in 2017.
Wind projects are emerging as a key energy source, with a number of power plants in the pipeline.
Lake Turkana Wind Project (LTWP), which will be the largest wind plant in Africa, is currently under construction in Marsabit and is expected to produce 310 MW when completed in June 2017.
Power producer KenGen is also scaling up wind production, which it expects to account for up to six per cent of its energy mix by 2020, up from the current 1.5 per cent. The firm has a total power capacity of 1,617 megawatts.
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