General Electric (GE) has won a contract to supply turbines to a Kenyan wind-power park, set to be sub-Saharan Africa’s largest wind-generation project outside South Africa, the US conglomerate said on Tuesday.
The 60.8MW Kinangop Wind Park is set to come online in the middle of 2015, and is one of several wind and geothermal projects in Kenya, where the government has pledged to ramp up output to meet growing demand for electricity.
GE said it would provide 38 turbines, each with a 1.6MW capacity, to be constructed by Iberdrola Engineering.
The US company, which joins Danish wind firm Vestas in supplying Kenyan wind farms, did not specify the value of the contract.
Another plant, the 300MW Lake Turkana Wind Power project, is expected to be completed in 2016 and will overtake Kinangop as the biggest wind farm in Kenya.
The power plants are part of Kenya’s plans to fill a power supply shortfall, which, coupled with a dilapidated grid network, means frequent power outages that hamper industry in East Africa’s biggest economy.
With capacity of 1,664MW against a maximum recorded demand of about 1,410MW, Kenya is under pressure to boost power generation as its economy is expected to expand more than 5%.
