A few years ago, Kenya had pledged to ensure that by 2020 its electricity generation mix would be made up of 100% renewable energy sources. Back then, renewable energy’s contribution was close to 77%. Since then, Kenya has built and commissioned the 310 MW Turkana Wind Farm and most recently, the 54.6 MW Garissa Solar PV Plant. These two power plants have helped push renewable energy generation’s contribution to an awesome 93%! The other major contributors in Kenya’s energy generation mix are geothermal and hydro.
All of this brings some good problems. Kenya’s installed generation capacity is sitting at over 2,700 MW, which now exceeds the current peak demand of around 1,900 MW. This is impressive, and is something that some countries in the Southern African region like South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are struggling with at the moment. So far, the government has moved to slash the tariff during the off-peak night times to encourage heavy users to take up more electricity during the night.
Now is the time for the utility company to look at avenues of increasing revenue generation and where they could possibly get a steady stream of new customers. Electric vehicles would be a good start! EVs could be the savior by providing a new channel to soak up some of that excess electricity as cars trickle-charge off Level 2 home points at homes and other compounds all through the night.
#environment #africa #EV
Kenya’s installed generation capacity is sitting at over 2,700 MW, which now exceeds the current peak demand of around 1,900 MW. At night during the off-peak periods, this demand goes down even further, to about 1000 MW. So where can all this excess and very clean nighttime electricity go?