LAKE Turkana Wind Power (LTWP), the developer of Lake Turkana wind farm – the single biggest operating wind farm in Africa – located in the Marsabit County of Kenya, has entered into a partnership with Clir Renewables, a software service company in the renewable energy industry.
This partnership is focused on ensuring that the wind farm is able to take full advantage of this optimal resource, and, ultimately deliver consistent, high yield returns for its investors as well as help the East African country to meet the growing demand for electricity with 100 percent renewable generation, consequently bringing down both national emissions and electricity costs.
According to the partnership agreement, Clir will analyse data from each of Lake Turkana’s 365 turbines in the context of available resources, geospatial features, and nearby turbines.
Through its machine learning-driven analysis, the software company will be able to see through the ‘noise’ of resource fluctuation and identify any instances of underperformance and their causes, providing LTWP with the insights necessary to increase annual energy production, monitor asset health, and manage technical financial risk.
The Clir’s team will further use this analysis to compare individual asset performance at a project, portfolio, and industry level, with insights shared with all project stakeholders via its reporting function.
Wellington Otieno, the chief technical officer at LTWP said that their aim is to make sure that this project produces beyond expectations.
‘With Clir, our team of local technicians will be supported with the most up-to-date digital tools and analytics to target operations and maintenance and cut unnecessary asset downtime and this will enable us to supply Kenya with consistent, low-priced, green energy.
‘We are pioneering wind energy generation at scale in the African continent, and we look forward to working with Clir to fully optimise performance and show the rest of the continent, and the world as a whole, what green energy possibilities there are here.
‘Our hope is that LTWP will inspire many more wind energy farms in Africa as we work towards protecting our environment,’ Otieno said.
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