Kenya is about to welcome the first biogas electricity producing plant that will supply the national grid with additional 2MW once the group gains approval from Energy Regulatory Commission.
The biogas power plant, located in an 800-hecatre Gorge Farm near Lake Naivasha and, is anticipated to start operations in March this year, and will generate electricity using crop waste such as spent vegetables, maize stovers, cut off rose flower stems, rejected vegetables and maize to produce electricity.
Biojoule Kenya’s US$ 6.5m electricity project will be enough to power about 8,000 houses once it comes online. The company has entered into a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Kenya Power to supply the electricity from the biogas plant, at Sh9.16 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), nearly a third of the cost consumers pay for thermal power (Sh25.23 per kWh).
“The key opportunities we see are for biogas, landfill gas and sewage gas. All of these technologies can be potentially deployed in Kenya,” said Alex Marshall, group marketing and compliance manager at Clarke Energy.
Biojoule Kenya, which is owned by Tropical Power where VP Group (formerly known as Vegpro) has a 50% stake, will become Kenya’s tenth IPP to supply electricity to the national grid, but the first to use biomass to generate such a large amount of power.
