Economy

Power woes in western Kenya to persist on project hitch

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A Kenya Power technician at work. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Western Kenya residents will have to bear intermittent power supply after the timeline for construction of a major transmission line was shifted for the sixth time.

Completion date for the Olkaria-Lessos-Kisumu transmission line has now crossed to 2021, extending the locking out of homes and industries in western Kenya from the geothermal power in Olkaria that sits idle due to the missing line.

The Sh18.2 billion project was dragged by lengthy wayleave wrangles around the Kedong Ranch in Naivasha and Kisumu’s Mambo Leo before Covid-19 added to its woes that the Ministry of Energy now says will stretch its completion date to January 2021.

Energy Cabinet secretary Charles Keter said the initiative was further delayed by travel restrictions driven by the pandemic, locking out the Chinese expatriates building the Lessos-Kisumu stretch of the line.

“The wayleave hurdle is not an issue now.

“We revised the project because the contractor on the Lessos-Kisumu stretch was delayed in China due to the travel protocols after the coronavirus broke out,” Mr Keter said.

The timeline change is the sixth for the line whose completion has remained hard to guarantee even as western Kenya continues to be starved of stable and adequate power supply from cheaper geothermal power from Olkaria steam fields.

Kenya Electricity Transmission Company had initially planned for the project to be completed in February 2018 before pushing it a year ahead to 2019 due to funding and wayleave challenges.


The Japanese-funded project (through JICA) comprising a 400,220 and 132KV network has been the missing link between the region and idle power in Olkaria, Naivasha.

Ketraco even said the project was 80 per cent complete by May 2019 before changing its completion time to March 2020 and later to July then September.




The wayleave hurdles said to have majorly contributed to the delays hit the project even months after President Uhuru Kenyatta signed the Land Value Amendment Act 2019 that provides for the assessment of the land value index for compulsory acquisition.

The law, which allows the National Land Commission to possess the land for government projects and compensate the legal owners within one year using the land value index, was expected to eliminate such hurdles blocking key projects like roads and power lines.

The 300-km Olkaria-Lessos-Kisumu line runs from Naivasha steam fields through Eldoret to Kisumu. It is expected to stabilise power supply in the region and ready it for industrial growth which is not possible with reliance on a gas turbine generator in Muhoroni and imports from Uganda.

Homes and businesses in western Kenya and parts of Nyanza experience frequent power rationing due to reliance on the 65-megawatt generator in Muhoroni run by the Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen).

The plant, which sells power at Sh34 per unit, makes it one of the most expensive sources of power in the country, a key factor in eroding the gains brought about by cheaper electricity from geothermal and hydro sources.

The line would supply the geothermal power which sells almost four times cheaper than the thermal energy generated in Muhoroni.

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