KenGen, Kenya’s leading electric power generation company, and the University of Twente have agreed on a three year collaboration in the field of geothermal energy. The agreement between the two parties was signed on Thursday 1 November in Nairobi, Kenya. For the period till 2022, the partners have set up a collaborative programme including both on-site activities at KenGen’s power plants in the Olkaria region as well as projects on knowledge exchange and capacity building. Thom Palstra, rector magnificus at the University of Twente, and Tom Veldkamp, dean of the ITC Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation of the UT, attended the festive kick-off event.
ACQUIRING AND EXCHANGING KNOWLEDGE
The University of Twente and KenGen have set up a programme for the coming years, as a result of a Memorandum of Understanding which was signed in 2016. The emphasize in the programme is on acquiring and exchange of knowledge. But also, as part of the programme, specific research projects will be undertaken at the geothermal plants of KenGen. The partners aim at creating an UAV (drone) platform that can be used for monitoring purposes with help of camera footage and infrared images. Also, there are plans to set up an advanced monitoring system to enable KenGen to use existing (geo) data more effectively to plan and monitor its activities.
GENERATING ENERGY BETTER, MORE EFFICIENT AND SAFER
Improving on the quality of monitoring will lead to a more sustainable, efficient and safe way of generating geothermal energy. Chris Hecker, who is an assistant professor in geological remote sensing at ITC and programme coordinator of the programme, says: “Adequate monitoring results in better grip on geothermal extraction processes. There are many factors that influence the extraction, including changing precipitation patterns as a result of climate change. By being able to anticipate adequately, we will ensure more sustainable and effective extraction processes. At the same time, we will watch the influence of extraction on its surroundings closely: groundwater, surface water, nature and air quality, to name a few.”
Recent experience of ITC researchers in Indonesia on extraction of geothermal energy will proof to be helpful within the collaboration with KenGen. As part of the GEOCAP project, which is financially supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, public and private partners build a solid network for sustainable geothermal energy generation in Indonesia.
Freek van der Meer, professor in geothermal energy and vice dean responsible for external collaborations states: “By contributing to various projects in this field, we are building bridges between parties all over the world that face similar challenges. Here, we can learn a lot from the experiences in Kenya and try to translate them into possible solutions elsewhere, for example in the Netherlands.”