Cables in Kenya

Life-edition about energy, electrical engineering, business and technology In the volcanic region of the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, tectonic shifts are tearing the continent apart and releasing unimaginable amounts of clean energy. Explosions of steam rise loudly, releasing heat from deep within the Earth. But even more powerful is the invisible steam: one that sweeps through miles of pipes, propels past turbines, generating clean energy that will last for millions of years. B5. “When completed, Olkaria VI will be the largest geothermal power plant in the world,” says Cyrus Caringiti, Olkaria's head of infrastructure and resources development. Globally, geothermal energy is a $ 4.6 billion (£ 3.3 billion) industry with more than 500 power plants electrifying millions of households in Southeast Asia, North America, Europe and beyond. After all, geothermal energy is the second most common source of energy in the world after solar. B0. To appreciate the potential of this heat, there is nothing better than seeing where it breaks through the surface in towers of steam erupting from Hell's Gate, ab Cables in Kenya out 90 kilometers (56 miles) northwest of Kenya's capital, Nairobi. On cloudy days it is difficult to tell which clouds are coming from the sky and which ones are from the ground. One morning in February, Anne Mwangi, a geophysicist at companies such as KenGen, was assigned to search for new geothermal drilling sites. She points to weak steam rising from a small hole in the rocky hillside. “You can boil an egg in it,” she says with a smile. The area around Olkaria abounds in natural geothermal springs such as these, some of which are quite hot. Mwangi explains that steam is what gave the name to Hell's Gate National Park: the landscape looks like the underworld is boiling. In a sense, this is so. About 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) below lies the core of the Earth, with temperatures higher than the surface of the Sun. This heat spreads upward through the thick mantle of the Earth to the outermost layer of the planet - the crust. Where tectonic plates, made up of the earth's crust and upper mantle, collide or break, this heat rises closer to the surface. One such site is the Great Rift Valley of Africa, which stretches 7,000 km (4,350 mi) along the eastern side of the continent. “This is where the continent is falling apart,” says Mwangi, pointing to rocky ridges with deep gorges between them. These are visible signs of two huge tectonic plates slowly diverging from each other. “This is an active process that will last for several million years,” she says. "In a few million years, if you come here, it will be the ocean." But at the same time, this tectonic movement can be used to obtain the energy that it releases. When tectonic plates move, cracks are formed - breaks in the earth's crust, which allow groundwater to interact with superheated rocks, turning them into steam. These cracks create pathways to the Earth's surface, where they form hot springs, geysers, or steaming geothermal springs. Here in the Great Rift Valley, most of the heat is just below the surface. “This energy comes from the Earth - and it is essentially limitless,” says Juliet Newson, director of the Icelandic School of Energy at the University of Reykjavik. “Kenya has really good resources and this is the Rift Valley. You have this [incredible] heat that is so close to the surface. " https://jiji.co.ke/388-cables