Power producer KenGen and Geothermal Development Company\n(GDC) are locked in a supremacy tussle. About the largest electricity producing\nwell!!!!! This is how geothermal development in Kenya today. Very healthy\ncompetition. The government-owned companies each claim their geothermal wells\nare the largest in Kenya and in Africa. This rivalry was again brought to light\nlast week during the One Planet Summit in Nairobi meant to ignite discourse\naround green energy transition and climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
KenGen claimed its single most productive well in\nNaivasha\u2019s Olkaria steamfields is the largest in Africa and among the top five\nglobally with a capacity to produce 30 megawatts (MW) of geothermal\nelectricity. This is Olkaria OW-921, sunk five years ago at a depth\nof 3km underneath the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the\nother hand, the Geothermal Development Company (GDC) holds that the Africa\ntitle goes to its Well 1A at Menengai fields in Nakuru, since its capacity of\n30.6 MW is slightly higher than KenGen\u2019s best performing well at 30 MW. It is a\nquestion of 0.6 MWe!! It is like school children comparing their score cards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A standard well on average yields only five megawatts 4\nto 5 MWe. This means KenGen\u2019s and GDC\nwonder wells are each equivalent to six wells. Drilling a single well costs an\naverage $5 million (Sh500 million). Some wells turn out dry, returning losses\nto investors in terms of sunk costs. But such wonder wells compensate the\nlosses. Other super wells are those in Indonesia (40 MWe per well) and\nCalifornia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
GDC is fully owned by the government while KenGen, which is listed on the Nairobi Securities Kenya is currently ranked the ninth largest producer of geothermal electricity in the world and the leader in Africa with a capacity of 690 MWe. \u00a0Kenya\u2019s power demand hits 1,832 MWe. Hydro power is other major source contributing to meet this demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Power producer KenGen and Geothermal Development Company (GDC) are locked in a supremacy tussle. About the largest electricity producing well!!!!! This is how geothermal development in Kenya today. Very healthy competition. The government-owned companies each claim their geothermal wells are the largest in Kenya and in Africa. This rivalry was again brought to light last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geothermal-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchandra.geosyndicate.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchandra.geosyndicate.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchandra.geosyndicate.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchandra.geosyndicate.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchandra.geosyndicate.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dchandra.geosyndicate.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":616,"href":"https:\/\/dchandra.geosyndicate.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions\/616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchandra.geosyndicate.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchandra.geosyndicate.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchandra.geosyndicate.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}