Kenya has won several Energy awards at the ongoing 39th World Energy Engineering Congress (WEEC) in Washington DC.
The congress running from September 21-23 has seen KenGen’s 280MW Olkaria Geothermal Power Plant bag the Innovative Energy Project of the Year Award while the utility’s Managing Director Eng Albert Mugo won the prestigious Energy Manager of the Year Award in the sub-Saharan Africa category.
Other categories won by Kenyans are Energy Engineer of the Year (Muriithi Eustace Njeru – Energy Regulatory Commission), Corporate Energy Management (Sarova Hotels), Energy Professional Development (Lawrence Mang’erere), Energy Project of the Year - national (Standard Bank Global Leadership Centre for Energy Management) and Young Energy Professional of the Year (Chris Mbori - Managing Director at Eenovators Limited).
The Awards sponsored by the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) recognises individuals and companies that have demonstrated notable contributions to the energy profession on the national and international levels.
Back home, KenGen has lined up a number of energy generating projects including the 25MW of early generation geothermal wellhead project which is expected to be complete by end of the year, bringing the total capacity on wellhead generation to 75MW.
Others are Olkaria 1 Unit 6 (70MW) and upgrade of Olkaria 1 Units 1, 2 and 3 to 50.7MW by 2017. The 140MW Olkaria V and Meru Wind phase 1 (80MW) are expected to come on stream in 2018. The Company also plans to commission an additional installed capacity of over 720MW mainly from affordable, clean and environmental friendly sources.
WEEC is the largest energy conference and technology expo held annually, specifically for business, industrial and institutional energy users. It brings together the top experts in all areas of the field to help them set a clear, optimum path to energy efficiency, facility optimisation and sustainability.