Kenya recently became home to the continent’s first grid-connected Anaerobic Digestion (AD) plant. The plant was opened by developer Tropical Power Energy Group on August 20. The 2.2-MW Gorge Farm Energy Park will use local crop waste to create biogas for electricity generation. Tropical Power plans to add 10 MW of solar energy capacity at the site in 2016. Kinuthia Mbugua, governor of Nakuru County, said the project would provide a boost to the country’s energy security. "The Gorge Farm Energy Park is a showcase project for Nakuru Country, Kenya and the African continent," he said in a statement. "Distributed power projects are vital to our energy security, reliability and efficiency and the park will be using local crop waste and the sun to generate clean, renewable power close to the point of use. I look forward to working with Tropical Power, Kenya Power and the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum to see how we can develop more biogas projects for organic and municipal waste in the country." The energy plant will also be used as a research facility for scientists at Oxford University, who will study the facility to identify ways of advancing the technology so it can compete with conventional fossil fuel power generation.
