Zurich-based ABB Power Company has been awarded a US$24m contract by Kenya Power Lighting Co. to upgrade the 50-year-old Juja substation to increase the grid stability and avoid blackouts.
The agreement involves upgrading the major power distributer for Nairobi and satellite and will also see the Juja station reduce pollution.
As part of the planned US$ 1.7bn network upgrade by Kenya Power, this project will also see the substation’s transformer handle 50% more power.
Kenya Power is targeting a production capacity of 5,000 MW by 2017.
Kenya Power said that the other projects with the same initiative of stabilising voltages and increasing the power supply should all be complete by 2017 and will cost US$ 208m.
ABB is a power and automation technologies company based in Zurich, Switzerland. Last year, Kenya Power announced that it would spend US$95.9m on 36 new substations.
