Nairobi September 11, 2008... Listed power generator KenGen has announced the selection of the contractors for the Sang’oro hydro power plant.

The company today signed the construction contract with Sinohydro of China, the successful tenderer for the project. The firm also signed on Nippon Koei of Japan as the consultants for the project.

Managing Director Eddy Njoroge said that the contractor was ready to move to site and is scheduled to commence work in November this year in line with the project timetable. “The project completion time is set at thirty six months from the commencement date and we are confident that within those three years we will be able to inject an additional 20 MW of electricity to the national grid,” said Mr Njoroge.

He added that the whole project was being engineered in a participatory manner similar to the Sondu Miriu one. “In order to ensure the participation of everyone in the process of developing this new power plant and maintain their goodwill we have included the local community representation in the technical committee that will drive it,” he said.

Sangoro’s construction follows KenGen’s securing of funding for the project from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) amounting to Ksh 3.65 billion.  It has a grace period of 10 years and a repayment of 30years at an interest of 0.75%. KenGen is funding the balance of about Ksh 1 billion as the total cost of the plant is estimated to Ksh 4.6 billion.

The new plant will be located 5 Km downstream at the end of the outlet channel of Sondu power station and will utilize the full discharge of 39.9 cubic metres per second of water from this station dropping from a height of 62.2 metres.

Sang'oro Power Plant was identified as one of the priority projects in addressing the growing demand for electricity, as it would be interfaced seamlessly with the Sondu/Miriu Hydro Power Project. In addition, it will enhance utilization of hydropower from the western Kenya catchment area, which has a different hydrological pattern from the Tana River cascade, where the bulk of the hydtopower in the country is generated from. In this regard, it will minimise the impact of weather on the power generation mix, which is presently dominated by hydro (over 70%). It will also mitigate the risk of having the bulk of the country's hydro generation on one river cascade.

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Nairobi March 6, 2008... Listed power producer today awarded scholarships to students who excelled in schools that are located near or on the various installations around the country.

The twenty students received cheques that will take care of their respective needs in full during the full term of four years in secondary school.

While presenting the scholarships KenGen board chairman Hon Titus Mbathi said pointed out to the students that their success would be monitored during the stay in school and urged the students not to let down their guard as there were other equally bright students in school.

Hon Mbathi said that KenGen would increase its annual spend on corporate social responsibility programs in line with its profits growth path. “We have allocated a per cent portion of our profits after tax to the CSR initiatives that we will be pursuing and expect education to take a large chunk as it ranks highly among them,” he explained.

The scholarships scheme started four years ago and this year, the first batch of sponsored secondary school students will be suiting for their Kenya Secondary School Examinations (KCSE). At the beginning of the program KenGen was only able to share Ksh 750,000 but this has now grown to Ksh 5 million. Hon Mbathi added that this figure was expected to grow with each passing year and thus benefit more students. The first batch of university students will be graduating in two years time.
To date there are 64 students benefiting from the KenGen scholarships program.

For more information contact mogutu@KenGen.co.ke Tel 3666711 or Mnjeru@KenGen.co.ke Tel 3666704