The Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) project has gained recognition in the world and has scooped the African Renewables Deal of the Year 2014 at the IJGlobal Awards 2014 Europe & Africa in London.
This award come just a few weeks after the same project was named the African Renewables Deal of the Year 2014 by Project Finance International earlier this month.
The IJGlobal Europe & Africa Awards are a celebration of the best in class deals in energy and infrastructure over the past year.
The awards’ judging panel, host and IJGlobal editor, Sarah Tame, said: “This project is a very significant project for Kenya, with its huge associated transmission infrastructure likely to be used to connect future projects to the grid.”
Since 2013 this project has gained the world’s attention; a report was released by the Standford University in 2013 saying that the project will be the biggest in Africa as it would provide electricity to Kenya as well as the rest of the world. The report claimed that it might be possible to generate seven fold energy excess, accessible blowing the wind even with a decrease in wind speeds when turbines rob energy from each other.
In 2014, the project entered a partnership with Harith General Partners who invested $870 million on the project to help in the completion of the project which is also said to produce more than seven fold of the energy than what Kenya currently produces.
The Chairman of the Board at LTWP, Mugo Kibati said “We are truly delighted to receive this award. It is not only a great honor for LTWP but for Kenya as a whole.”
The Lake Turkana Wind Power project will provide 310 MW of reliable, low-cost, onshore wind power to the Republic of Kenya’s national grid, which is equivalent to approximately 20 percent of the current installed electricity generating capacity. The project is of significant strategic benefit to Kenya, and at KSh70 billion (€600 million) will be the largest single-private investment in Kenya’s history. The construction and long-term maintenance contracts also addressed unique challenges faced by the location of Lake Turkana, which is in one of the most remote areas of Kenya.