Wind Wire: Five-fold increase for wind farm

KenGen, a state power generating monopoly, is planning to award two contracts in a bid to increase capacity at the Ngong Hills wind farm from 5.1MW to 25.5MW. The two contracts of 6.8MW and 13.6MW will be awarded over the next two years through funding from Belgium and Spain. The company's managing director, Edward Njoroge, says that Kenya, east Africa's largest economy, wants to build renewables plants with a total capacity of 3GW by 2018, with most of this expected to come from geothermal and wind projects. "We embarked on this project in 2007 after the signing of a commercial agreement between KenGen and TPF-Econoler SA of Belgium for a grid connected wind farm," he says.