Corporate News
By DAVID HERBLING, hdavid@ke.nationmedia.com
In Summary
American engineering firm Cummins Inc has set October
as the date to begin generating electricity from a toxic shrub
popularly referred to as ‘Mathenge,’ after more than two years of false
starts blamed on mechanical hitches.
The Columbus-based company said it is working to rectify the
technical snags that have dogged the 12-megwatt Mathenge power plant in
Marigat, Baringo County, which was due to begin feeding the grid in
June 2014.
The poisonous shrub’s scientific name is prosopis juliflora, but was christened Mathenge by locals.
“The delay was brought by the modification being
done (still in progress) on the gasifiers to contain excess tar and
water, and also enhance gas cleaning and upgrade on gasifier control
system with modification being done,” the firm said in an interview with
the Business Daily.
Cummins now says the first batch of two megawatts produced from the noxious weed will be sold to Kenya Power in October.
The firm had first set June 2014 as the offtake date, which was later moved to March 2015.
“We will resume trial runs by next week. If trial
runs are of success for the next three weeks, by end of September or
early October we will export the two megawatts of power for phase one to
the grid.”
The Sh3 billion ($30 million) Mathenge power plant
is a joint venture between Cummins Power Generation and British firm
Gentec Energy.
Cummins acquired the Baringo Mathenge power project
for an undisclosed fee from Tower Power, a venture owned by Manu
Chandaria through Comcraft Group and Powergas International, a UK-based
energy conglomerate.
Electricity from the Mathenge plant in Baringo will
be sold to Kenya Power at a cost of ¢10 (Sh10) per kilowatt-hour, half
the cost of diesel-fired electricity which is priced at ¢20 (Sh20) per
kWh.
Cummins’ upcoming Mathenge power plant becomes
Kenya’s third biomass electricity producer to be connected to the
national grid after Mumias Sugar bagasse and Naivasha-based horticultural firm VP Group biogas plant.
The project to tap plant as a power source is
backed by US President Barack Obama’s Power Africa initiative which
seeks to utilise green energy sources to generate cheaper electricity in
the continent.
Producing power from the shrub involves cutting the
tree stem into chips, drying and then burning them at high temperatures
under controlled oxygen to avoid complete combustion. The resulting gas
is used to run specialised generators which in turn produce
electricity.
The power plant will transform the Mathenge tree
from a ‘noxious weed’ to ‘cash crop’ status when about 2,000 Baringo
households begin supplying Cummins with tree stems as the raw materials
for power generation
well hope Kenyan can develop a sustainable energy in the future. Electric Power Companies
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