President William Ruto commissioned the 220/66 kilovolt (kV) Kimuka Substation on Wednesday, serving 560,000 customers in Nairobi and surrounding areas.
The substation supplies five 66kV feeder lines to Karen/Dagoreti/Kikuyu, Ngong, Matasia, Magadi, and Ngemwa KPC pumping stations.
Speaking during the commissioning, Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (KETRACO) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) KEsaid the Kimuka energization will assist in de-loading the existing 220kV Suswa-North lines and 220/66kV transformers at Nairobi North Substation by transferring load (80 megawatt) from Nairobi North Substation to Kimuka Station.
“This will help reduce the risk of system instability and improve security of evacuation of power from green sources (geothermal, wind and hydro imports) from Suswa to Nairobi.”
The Kimuka substation line is part of the Nairobi Ring and Associated Substations project, which, once completed, will offer an alternative supply path for power into the Nairobi Metropolitan region.
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Further, it will remove the load from the existing overloaded substations.
The scope of the project involves the construction of a 103 km 400kV double circuit line from Suswa substation to Isinya substation rated at 1200MW, two 220kV substations at Suswa and Isinya, as well as 220/66kV substations at Kimuka, Athi River and Komarock.
Agence française de développement (AFD), the European Investment Bank (EIB), and the Government of Kenya (GoK) have financed the Kimuka project with $25 million.
The project, which has a 1,700MW evacuating capacity, is part of the system strengthening/capacity enhancement projects that will improve the transfer capacity of electrical energy and address the challenges of low voltages, high transmission losses, unreliability of supply, and network security.
