The drilling is being undertaken by by Great Wall Drilling Company, a Chinese firm. The Kenyan Energy Minister Hon Kiraitu Murungi who was on hand for the groundbreaking was quoted as saying; “On the implementation card under this programme is an additional 35-megawatt 3rd unit at Olkaria II and 70 MW Olkaria IV power plant, which we are now setting the stage for,”
The work will involve drilling six directional wells to complement three exploration wells which were drilled eight years ago and will hopefully be completed within 1 year. The target depth for the new wells is 2600 meters and will result in a True Vertical Depth (TVD) of about 2475 meters. Current estimations according to the Energy Minister are that Kenya has 2,000 MW of geothermal power which could be explored. Currently only 130 MW of geothermal power are on stream across three sites.
Kenya Electricity Generating Company Limited otherwise known as KenGen is responsible for producing 80% of the electricity which Kenya uses. While the company utilizes a variety of sources such as hydro, geothermal, thermal, and wind , hydro continues to lead the way accounting for 72% of power generated for a total of 677.3 MW. In total the company produces about 1,000 MW in Kenya.
For additional information:
http://www.kengen.co.ke/index.asp http://www.kengen.co.ke/content.asp?id=13&catid=3 http://www.kengen.co.ke/news_content.asp?id=105&catid=8
