As one of the highlights of 2024, we are proud to have hosted our inaugural Youth Open Day at our site in Loiyangalani, Marsabit County.
The event, which was held on Wednesday 13th November, saw more than 100 youth from Laisamis constituency turn up for a tour of our wind farm, marking a significant step toward engaging the next generation in renewable energy. “We regularly host youth on-site as part of our usual Open days, but this was the first dedicated Open Day for youth only,” said Felix Rottmann, our ESG Manager.
Site visit
After a sumptuous breakfast, we took our guests through a Safety Brief before ushering them into different vehicles for a tour of sections of our farm. At the first stop, we explained the geography of the area, where they learnt that the site lies between 450m at the shore of Lake Turkana and 2,300m above sea level at the top of Mt. Kulal. It is here where strong, predictable wind streams are generated between Lake Turkana (with relatively constant temperature) and the desert hinterland (with steep temperature fluctuations).
“The Lake Turkana Wind Power project takes advantage of a natural wind phenomenon to generate electricity,” explained Rottmann.
Our next stop was at one of the highest points on the wind farm, where we explained how turbines work. There was an Aha moment when the team explained the various parts of the turbines and what they do.
When one youth asked how much power is generated, they were informed that the wind farm has the capacity to generate 310MW which is equivalent to 310,000,000kW enough to
supply about 17% of Kenya’s installed capacity and power a million households. However, this is dependent on wind speeds which fluctuate.
LTWP substation
The last stop was the substation where they saw the structure and learnt how the power generated from our 365 turbines is collected into one central area called the “Substation” before it is transmitted to the national grid at Suswa.
“The substation serves as the power dispatch centre for monitoring and dispatching power to the national grid. In addition, the substation also serves as a communication hub to control all the turbines through the installed communication equipment,” explained John Chege, our Deputy Chief Technical Officer.
After the tour, the attendees composed of 83 males and 35 females had an opportunity to listen to our CEO Max Schiff who gave them an update on how the wind farm is doing. This was followed by a presentation about our Winds of Change projects presented by Rottmann who runs the program. He took them through some of our projects in water, health and education while explaining how each project is developed to ensure it has maximum impact on the community.
The final session was an interactive Q&A forum. Job Lengoiyap, our Community Liaison Manager, says it was important to host an Open Day on-site specifically for the youth not only for them to learn how power is generated but also for the team to answer various questions that the youth had and to receive feedback, which we later use to better our engagements in the future.
