Kenya through its ministry of energy has already started laying out wind and solar power project sites for investors . According to the officials this is an effort to help investors avoid the hassle of hunting for prospective locations and possibly lessen the construction period.
The Director of renewable energy at the Ministry of Energy, Mr.Isaac Kiva ‘’we are looking for potential locations as a guide tool for investors.’’ He spoke during the green energy conference at Strathmore University .
The conference was held this week, organized by Italy – based Renewable energy solutions for Africa (Res4Africa).The conference is to discuss the challenges that need to be addressed by the regions’ governments so as to ascertain energy security and meet the regions’ energy needs.
40 of the Italian companies drawn in the green energy conference are participating in the two-day conference as they search for business deals in Kenya. The Kenyan renewable energy market has currently been attracting many local and multi -lateral investors, who are interested in building wind farms, solar parks and geothermal wells.
This is after the Government calls for private investors to develop clean energy plants in an effort to attain the state’s goals to add 5,000 megawatts to the national grid by the year 2020.
Kenya has recently drafted new regulation expected to comes into play in three months time .The new regulations gives the Ministry of Energy officials authority to choose electricity generation projects and award them to the bidders quoting the lowest tariffs.
The competitive bidding window is a guaranteed policy device to cut down electricity bills.
The auction will substitute the present feed in tariff(FiT) system ,where the investors find a prospective viable project and then get a licenses to operate on them at pre- determined rates without any constraint for tendering .
