
Kenya launches largest wind power plant in Africa - doener
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/20/africa/africas-largest-wind-farm-intl/index.html
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igravious
“While these projects will help build energy supply on the continent, the
International Energy Agency has said sub-Saharan Africa needs to invest $300
billion in order to achieve universal electricity access by 2030.”

While that sounds like a lot of dosh – and it is – in the grand scheme of
things the benefits would be unimaginably transformative.

Geek stats: [https://ltwp.co.ke/ltwp-connected-to-
grid/](https://ltwp.co.ke/ltwp-connected-to-grid/)

    
    
      • Construction of 365 Wind Turbine Generators (WTGs), with a capacity of 850kW each, for a
        total project installed capacity of 310 MW connected via a 33kV collection grid to the substation;
      • Installation of 365 Step-up Transformers 0.69/33 kV per Unit;
      • Construction of a sectionalized 33kV Substation, Step-up Power Transformers 33/220(400) kV;
      • Installation of three Dynamic Reactive Power Compensation Systems (Statcoms);
      • Installation of a SCADA System;
      • Construction of the LTWP Accommodation Village, which houses 148 people;
      • Construction and maintenance of 130km of internal access roads; and,
      • Upgrading of 208km road from Laisamis to Sarima.

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nickserv
300 billion is actually a lot less than I would have thought... and
incidentally it's about _6 times_ less than the US invasion of Iraq.

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iamgopal
Last I calculated, All energy needs of all of the world would be supplied with
solar plants worth a trillion dollar.

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prickledpear
I'd love to see the numbers on this if you have them in a shareable format.
How did your model account for value deflation and what assumptions did it
make about storage tech?

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JRKrause
I visited Kenya last November and used their local Uber quite a bit. This
ended up being a very effective way to meet technically inclined and
entrepreneurial Kenyans. Talking with these people gave me a lot of optimism
for their future, there's a lot of hunger (unintended pun...) and talent
waiting to be utilized there. I really hope they continue to see development
that will leverage and grow their technical skill base.

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1337biz
Are you talking about Uber drivers or is that some shared car service?

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JRKrause
Uber specifically.

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woodandsteel
One of the main arguments of the global climate change deniers is that
switching to renewable energy would destroy any chance of developing countries
to build up their energy networks and escape poverty.

That's mistaken. Thanks to continuing declines in the price of solar and wind
energy and also storage batteries, renewable energy has become for many places
cheaper than fossil fuel electricity generation. And in fact the global loan
and investment community as in the last couple of years realized this and has
decided to stop financing coal generation plants.

What we are going to see in Africa is similar to how countries there leap-
frogged past landlines and went straight to mobile phones. African countries
are going to start building renewable energy facilities on a mass scale, and
besides that many villages will simply install their own local fields of solar
panels.

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technofiend
>destroy any chance of developing countries to build up their energy networks
and escape poverty.

You mean cross country networks? Long haul, high voltage networks? If power is
ubiquitous because of local grids with solar-fed storage to buffer night time
use that enables everyone but high power users, i.e. industrial users. So the
implication is only power hungry industrial base will let Africa escape
poverty? That seems like a very last century view.

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tr33house
So happy to see this happening in Kenya. While still not enough capacity to
really move the needle on the prices [1] and really make larger-scale
manufacturing possible, it's a step in the right direction

[1]: [https://stima.regulusweb.com/](https://stima.regulusweb.com/)

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zshrdlu
Like most of my peers, I've been following this project with some interest.
The key insight for me is how big an inhibitor lack of capital is for us poor
countries. Our private and public sectors combined could not fund this
project, and that saddens me a great deal.

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agumonkey
I wonder what became to Akon solar panels plans ?

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HocusLocus
2024: Kenya erupts into civil war and darkness over before-end-of-life bearing
replacement

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1337biz
You are downvoted quite hard but I wonder about the same underlying question.
How stable are investments in these countries? How independent are these
operations from arbitrary governmental decisions?

Or is for these states after the Oil Curse coming a solar curse...

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Gibbon1
Far as I know Kenya's oil and gas production is nil. The curse if anything is
the continual need to import both. Building out solar and wind and transport
electrification would make sense for them.

All the money they spend now for oil and gas could be used instead to pay for
consumer and industrial goods. Example a friend of mine that spent 2 months
traveling in Southern Africa said that imported building materials appear to
very dear.

