The Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) has continued to invest in green energy as it moves to assist farmers to access renewable forms of energy while cutting electricity costs.
KTDA on Thursday commissioned the third Hydro Power Plant in Nyeri charged to reduce the cost of power production in tea processing factories.
The first plant under the project is the Imenti power plant which was commissioned in 2008, followed by the Chania plant, the Gura plant and then the North Mathioya plant.
During a media tour of the Gura hydropower plant, KTDA Assistant manager of the hydropower project Ken Macharia said the project also creates revenue for the Agency by selling excess power generated to the National Grid.
“The supply of power generated for the factories is directly proportional to the volume of crop handled by the factories, which heavily depends on the time of the year. This means that in the high season, when the rains are constant, the volume of leaves to process is high, but also the volume of water in the rivers high, therefore, it would be impossible to have an under supply of energy,“ Ken Macharia.
This project has enabled tea factories to remain self-reliant on the electricity needed to run their operations, with the hydropower accounting for 98.5 per cent of power supplied to respective factories and aligns with the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Through this, the agency has answered the seventh and thirteenth SDGs of affordable clean energy and climate action.
“The water that is used in power production is released back into the river it was channeled from unpolluted, so we avoid disrupting the supply of water to the locals yet still benefit from what we collect,” Ken Macharia.
Macharia said that KTDA is also looking to tap into solar power and set them up in areas that are not able to, or do not have the resources to allow them access to hydropower resources.
Read also; KTDA Farmers’ Record a 42% Increase in Earnings to a Record of Ksh 63 Billion.
