By James Anyanzwa

A new trend of developing small hydropower projects is emerging within the tea sub-sector to provide reliable, cheap and clean electricity supply to tea factories.

 The move is aimed at enhancing the competitiveness of Kenyan tea in the international market and to cut emissions of green house gases and other pollutants arising from the operations of diesel-fed generators.

 Two power projects are being developed to work under wheeling arrangements while supplying power to the tea factories through the use of the existing Kenya Power distribution grid.

These are Gura Small Hydropower Project (5 MW capacity) located on the Gura River in Nyeri County of Kenya and Kipchoria Hydropower Project (3 MW capacity) located on the Kipchoria River in Nandi County of Kenya.

 The tea industry is a heavy consumer of power mainly for firing tea leaves into granules.  The main source of power for the over 100 tea factories in Kenya is currently wood and diesel.

Power wheeling

 However, lack of a tariff structure for power wheeling has thwarted efforts by independent power producers to supply electricity to the tea factories in the country.

 According to a new ‘Power Wheeling Case study’ report, independent power generators require a comprehensive tariff structure to evacuate energy through the existing Kenya Power transmission infrastructure.

 “A power wheeling structure will make it easy to transfer power but lack of it does not stop tea factories from investing in energy plants and selling excess electricity to the national grid,” said Lerionka Tiampati, the managing director of Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA).

 Wheeling in distribution means using utility grid to carry energy produced by a third party generator to a designated customer. While power wheeling is common practice in other countries, it is a new development in Kenya.

The country though has embarked on a process to develop a wheeling charge mechanism after power transmission company Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) said it plans to contract a consultant to undertake the process.

 It is touted that formulation of a tariff structure by Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) will set an important precedent for determining the supply of electricity by independent producers into the national grid.

 Power wheeling concept seeks to allow local tea factories avoid building new transmission lines from the power sources parallel to the existing Kenya Power lines.

 The report dubbed ‘Greening the Tea Industry in East Africa (GTIEA)’ also says the concept of power wheeling will significantly cut costs and reduce environmental degradation.

Small hydropower

 “We propose that distribution wheeling charge apply to the consumers who are connected to KPLC distribution grid and extract energy generated by an earmarked generator from the Grid, says report dated April 2012.

 “Our general concept is that the wheeling charges will be included in a usual electricity purchase contract covering the supply of a power capacity on the local distribution grid and energy that the utility has to provide to the customer due to the wheeling activity. This contract will also cover the energy supply that is needed to complement the generator energy provision.”

  “It is in this context that the idea of power wheeling from small hydropower generation sites to the factories through Kenya Power medium voltage lines was put forward by the GTIEA project,” says report.

 GTIEA Project is supporting and facilitating small hydropower stakeholders especially the tea industries in the region to build small hydropower projects (SHP) for internal consumption and supply the excess electric power to the national grid.

 The Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) expects that Gathuthi, Gitugi, Iria - Ini and Chinga tea factories will benefit from the Gura power supply. Currently, KPLC is supplying all the four tea factories.

 “This is because there is no existing wheeling charge for medium voltage power wheeling although there is a policy in place,” the report notes.