Konza Technopolis is set to build a 50 megawatt (MW) solar plant via public-private partnership (PPP) to power the smart city and reduce reliance on the national grid.
John Okwiri, the chief executive officer of Konza Technopolis Development Authority, told this publication that the State entity finalised the concept note for the plant in December last year, paving the path for its submission to the PPP Directorate of the National Treasury.
Konza currently fully relies on Kenya Power for all its electricity needs and the solar plant will significantly cut the amount that the city spends on power bills.
The facility is located in the arid and semi-arid Kapiti Plains where abundant solar radiation for most parts of the year have made it ideal to develop a solar power plant.
“We are looking at doing a 50MW solar power plant, we have already allocated the space. We intend to do it via the PPP model,” Mr Okwiri said.
“We finalised the concept in December and it is one of the notes that we will submit to the PPP Unit to have a look at.”
The PPP Directorate of the National Treasury must approve any PPP project and clear the procuring public entity to go ahead and seek investors.
Under the PPP plan, investors will recoup their outlay via consumer tariffs throughout an agreed period.
Konza currently hosts a 400kV substation, which takes electricity from the Olkaria geothermal fields and Isinya.
The PPP-funded solar plant plan, if approved, will see Konza become the latest major institution in the country opting for an alternative power source largely to reduce its expenditure on power bills.
Carbacid Investments, Mabati Rolling Mills, Abyssinia Group Industries and International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology are some of the entities that have installed solar plants in recent years.
Electricity supplied from the national grid has often been unreliable and its price has increased rapidly in the past decade.
Konza will host Kenya’s smart city and will be home to an estimated 230,000 residents with the high population set to significantly drive electricity requirements, highlighting why the solar power plant will come in handy.
The solar power plant is the second PPP-funded project that Konza is pursuing, after a similar plan to expand the infrastructure for data storage and processing capacity of its data centre.
The PPP Directorate approved the concept plan for the PPP-funded expansion of the Konza Data Centre last month, paving the way for the authority to undertake feasibility studies for the project.
