Deadline extended for power interconnection project
Malawians will wait until December 2024 to experience stable electricity supply courtesy of the Malawi-Mozambique Power Interconnection Project after government has yet again extended the deadline.
The project was initially expected to be switched on by October this year.
In an interview on the sidelines of the project assessment tour in Mwanza, Neno and Phombeya in Balaka yesterday, Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) chief operations officer Maxwell Mulimakwenda said the project will be completed in December this year.
He said: “So on the Malawi side, we are very hopeful that by December, we will be done. But this project the whole line from here [Phombeya] to Matambo in Mozambique has to be completed.
Mulimakwenda also said Malawi reversed its earlier plan of tapping 120 megawatts (MW) from the project, saying it would have cost about $10 million (K17.4 billion) per month. Instead, he said Malawi will in the first five years get 50MW at about $4.5 million (about K7.8 billion) per month.
In a separate interview, Minister of Energy Ibrahim Matola said he was satisfied with the progress of the project.
He expressed optimism that the completion of the project will boost the country’s economic activities.
Said Matola: “The country’s focus is on boosting agriculture, tourism and mining [ATM Strategy], but all these cannot be properly achieved if we don’t have reliable electricity.”
The project comprises erection of 218-kilometre (km) 400 kilovolts high voltage power transmission line to feed about 50MW into the Malawi national grid.
The power interconnector is one of the projects expected to improve the power situation in the country.
Currently, Malawi has a total installed capacity of 554.24MW of power of which 101MW is from solar sources, according to Escom.
In November 2021, President Lazarus Chakwera and his Mozambique counterpart Filipe Nyusi presided over the launch of construction works for the power interconnector transmission line.
However, construction works only started in March 2023, with the contractor, Larsen and Toubro Limited, an Indian multinational construction firm, assuring that they would finish by December 2023.
Larsen and Toubro is executing the project alongside Gola Civil Engineering Contractors Limited.
The power interconnector will also upgrade the country’s profile from an observer to a fully operational member of the Southern African Power Pool.
The power interconnection project was abandoned in 2011 after the Malawi Government said the project was costly. It was later signed by the two governments in April 2013 and the process has continued since then.
