25 Apr 2012
World Bank loans Kenya Power US$47m ... while 500 communities in Ghana to receive power ... as AECOM wins excellence award for Africa electrical interconnection project ... but Kenya Power’s escalating rates despite profits!
Engineering News: Kenya Power receives $47m World Bank loan for distribution projects
John Muchira of Engineering News reports that the World Bank granted Kenya Power a US$47m loan to improve its power distribution network. The country will construct new 132KV substations and transmission lines to connect the substations in certain regions.
According to Kenya Power MD, Joseph Njoroge, the new projects form part of the government’s Kenya Electricity Expansion Project and...
29 Nov 2011
A continuing black-eye for how US utilities handle Smart Grid conversions. The City of Boulder in Colorado, US has voted to convert its electric infrastructure from private to public ownership. The private utility, Xcel Energy had spent a lot of money attempting to make Boulder the world’s first Smart Grid City. It seems Xcel should have spent...
What Happened
One of the world’s first smart grid cities, designed to prove that smart grid technologies could deliver value to customers, has created a political, and eventually economic, dispute between one of the bigger publically-owned utilities in the US, Xcel Energy, and one of the most progressive, technology-friendly communities in the US, Boulder, Colorado, resulting in bad news for all concerned.
Background
Xcel Energy, an electric utility serving eight Southwest and...
18 Nov 2011
With the completion in October 2010 of the 260km-long, subsea cable between the UK and the Netherlands, the Dutch transmission grid is becoming a key interconnection throughout the EU. IThe Dutch government is spending billions of euros to improve and expand its high voltage grid, planning to add 14GW of power capacity to its grid by 2018, a 50...
The Dutch government liberalized its electricity industry in 1996. The Electricity Act of 1998 saw the end of monopoly positions. From 2007, all electricity customers could choose their supplier.
Metering
In 2007, in order to curb the nation’s energy consumption, the Dutch government announced that all households must have smart meters by 2013. Companies such as Continuon, Nuon and Delta Netwerkbedrijf installed meters in various cities. However, in 2010 the government postponed the...
15 May 2012
Costa Rica’s Reventazón Hydroelectric Dam receives a US$670m loan from the Inter-American Development Bank, bringing the country closer to its 100% renewables by 2021.
What happened
Costa Rica’s biggest, and most intricate...
Visit our archive for Global
