Govt Seeks Coal Power Plant Investors - kenyadetails

The government is seeking experienced private investors to develop a 900-1000 Megawatts (MW) coal fired power plant in Kitui under an Independent Power Producer framework. The Ministry of Energy and Petroleum says the investor will be involved in developing the plant and selling power under a Power Purchase Agreement.

The Kitui power plant is expected to be constructed by December 2016 and will use coal from Mui Basin. The project is part of the government's ambitious plan to raise the power generation capacity by 5000MW by 2016.


The new capacity will comprise natural gas 1,050 Megawatts, geothermal 1,646 MW and wind 630 MW. In January 2014, the government issued request for proposal documents to successful bidders for the 960 MW thermal coal power plant in Lamu and 700MW Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) thermal power plant to be located in Dongo Kundu in Mombasa.

The successful bidders for the Lamu Plant include; Mitsui and Company limited, Shanxi International Electricity Group, Sinohydro Group, Shanghai Electric Power Company, Tata Power, Marubeni Corporation, Allrich International, Toyota Tutshu, Toyota power, Human Capital Investment Group.

The successful bidders for the Dongo Kundu LNG facility include: China Petroleum, Tata Power in consortium with Gulf Energy, Globlec, Mitsui and Company, Toyota Tutshu, Marubeni Corporation, Sumsang C and T, GMR Energy, Quantum power and GDF Suez.

The Lamu project is supposed to be completed by 30 months while the Dongo Kundu LNG project is scheduled be completed in 24 months with the government only giving partial risk guarantee.

Kenya's power system currently has a capacity of 1,664MW comprising of hydro (770MW); geothermal (241MW); thermal (622MW); co-generation (26MW) and wind (5MW).