African Wind

A planned 300-megawatt Kenyan wind farm is edging closer to reality as developers prepare to select contractors to build roads, bridges and transmission lines to the extremely remote site in the Marsabit district. The $780 million Lake Turkana Wind Power project will be Africa’s largest, according to the Engineering News Record. The developers are a consortium lead by Aldwych International (51 percent) and Industrial Development Corp. of South Africa (19 percent).

Building 426 kilometers of transmission lines from Marsabit will cost $170 million. In addition,
Chris Staubo, LTWP’s director, told ENR that several contractors had been short-listed for building a $15 million, 200-kilometer road that would be part of the 1,200-kilometer distance between the project site and the Port of Mombasa, on the Indian Ocean. Some 4,000 truckloads of equipment will have to reach the site via this road, including turbines, towers and blades from Italy and Germany.

Once preliminary construction is finished, Vestas Wind will begin its engineering, procurement and construction contract for the project, ENR said.