Twenty six companies are interested in the coal power plant while 36 are interested in the natural gas-fired power plant/FILE
The firms were responding to the Expression of Interest (EOI) request made by the ministry on September 28 this year for development of a 960 megawatts of coal power plant in Lamu and another one for Liquefied Natural Gas in Dongo Kundu, Mombasa.
Twenty six companies are interested in the coal power plant while 36 are interested in the natural gas-fired power plant.
Speaking while receiving the applications, Energy Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir said the evaluation on the EOIs received will begin from October 29 and the qualifying 10 firms will then move to the next stage, which is, Request for Proposal.
Proposal evaluation by the ministry will then take 75 days before settling on the two best firms for each project.
“You will appreciate why we see success in this programme. We are telling the private investors to do the business plan, we agree on the cost of power and we later buy all the power when the projects are complete,” the Cabinet Secretary said.
The coal plant construction will take 30 months while the LNG one will take 24 months to be completed.
The coal and gas fired power plants are projects under the power generation programme launched by the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum early last month, and which aims at putting an additional over 5000MW into the national grid by 2016.
