More than 3 million year ago , an copycat living on the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya made what was believably themost ripe toolthe world had ever seen . This calendar month , the same site saw that ape ’s descendants take another technical step forrad , drawing powerfrom one of the most challenging place in which we ’ve ever managed to build a idle words farm .
Millions of years ago , when Australopithecines – an extinct group of hominins – were carving Isidor Feinstein Stone tool in the Turkana Valley , its surround was probably quite inviting . Today the surface area is very dry and suffer one of the least dense populations in Eastern Africa . The small population is far too poor to use much electricity . The power from the Lake Turkana hint farm is mostly being sent 430 km ( 270 mile ) to Nairobi .
To make the farm bechance , install high - potential difference transmission towers was just part of the challenge . When construction began the orbit lack roads capable of carry the with child equipment required .
So why would anyone work up a wind farm in such an uninviting piazza ? The resolution , unsurprisingly , is fumble in the malarkey , and Lake Turkana hasa lotof it . The combining of a dip in thejet streamover Eastern Africa , which bring it nigh to the control surface of the Earth , and the way the local topography funnels the wind , makes the breaking wind farm ’s location probably thewindiest placeon any continent , Antarctica aside .
One day , its boosters hope , Lake Turkana could power 20 percent of East Africa . The 310 - megawatt farm , made from 365 turbines , is a test of whether the location ’s wind resourcefulness can overcome its remoteness . The wind farm was all built and ready to lock by December 2017 , but the power line to deport electrical energy to the Kenyan grid suffered one hold after another . Now , last , it has been completed and transmission has begun , although variation are expected until December .
We know many animalsuse tools , and probably did so long before our antecedent joined in . However , the cautiously knapped Harlan Fiske Stone cores found on the shores of Lake Turkana are theoldest toolsever found , and probably represented the most sophisticated engineering science the world had seen at the meter .
That ca n’t quite be say of the blade now harvest the tune by the Lake ’s shores , which are small-scale in comparison with those dotting the North Sea . Nevertheless , the site has already been the testing dry land oflaser technologyto choose the secure towboat emplacement . If it follow , the complex try of building Africa ’s largest wind farm in such a difficult location , and using it to power one of the miserable , but fastest - growing , neighborhood on Earth , could one day come to be seen as another major milestone in humans ’s ontogeny .
