Malawians have been enjoying relatively stable electricity supply over the past two years, thanks to multi-billion kwacha investments in generation and transmission capacity upgrades, it has emerged.
Interviews with various officials show that government, in its race to stabilise power and meet President Lazarus Chakwera’s target of 1 000 megawatts (MW) by next year, has invested over K50 billion in generation and transmission to improve supply, especially after cyclones Ana and Freddy destroyed Kapichira Hydro Power Station and other electricity infrastructure.
The steady supply has brought to a minimum power blackouts and load shedding that became so pronounced under the Peter Mutharika administration that the regime shoved through a generator deal with Aggreko.
Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom), Electricity Generating Company (Egenco) and Ministry of Energy officials said apart from Kapichira repairs, they invested $20 million (about K35 billion) in transmission infrastructure maintenance.
The investment in the power sector followed the devastation of Kapichira Hydro Power Station, whose 129.6 megawatts (MW) or 33 percent of the country’s power capacity, was taken off from the national grid because of Cyclone Ana in January 2022.
To bring Kapichira back into the national grid in May 2023, government invested K10 billion after 13 months since it was destroyed on January 24 2022.
Escom chief operations officer Maxwell Mulimakwenda, in an interview, said: “The main maintenance project that we conducted at Escom apart from normal repairs is the transmission investment of $20 million that was assisted by Japan International Cooperation Agency.”
He said this investment has scaled up its transformers at Kanengo in Lilongwe from 85MW to 158MW, which has stabilised power supply in the capital city.
But current and former Escom board chairpersons Morgan Tembo and Frederick Changaya, respectively said in interviews that apart from financial investment in repairing Kapichira, structural adjustments within Escom and a correction on Egenco billing of electricity to Escom played their roles.
Changaya, who chaired Escom between 2020 and 2022, said although he found rampant blackouts, a careful analysis discovered that demand was consistently less than supply such that despite removing Aggreko diesel power generation deal, the supply was still better than demand.
He said: “We instructed management that blackouts shouldn’t be seen anymore. You will note that in the second half of 2021, electricity supply improved and blackouts disappeared except due to faults.
“We were even surprised why we needed Aggreko. Our board agreed with the Cabinet Committee position not to extend the contract of Aggreko for more than one year. One year was given just to allow for transition.”
Changaya said after restoring the power supply consistency, they embarked on maintenance and upgrading of the grid and the systems such as software and customer care centre, which could strengthen the supply framework.
“Unfortunately, our term of office was spoiled by cyclones that kept damaging the transmission and distribution infrastructure. Cyclone Freddy, for instance, damaged Kapichira and took out 33 percent of the power supply,” he lamented.
On his part, Tembo credited the stable electricity generation and distribution to improvements in both supply and demand sides.
But apart from the previously said investments in the power sector, he said the settling of tariff dispute with Egenco resulted in improved generation capacity.
Said Tembo: “Over the years, Egenco billed Escom based on machine capacity and not energy generated. On average, Escom was getting 54 percent of the capacity and this had an adverse effect not only on Escom but also on the power sector.
“Once the dispute was resolved and billing was agreed to be a composite of capacity and energy, Egenco improved generation capacity to more than 85 percent.”
He said other interventions that followed included improvements in distribution of electricity, which included sealing of revenue leakages and commercial losses.
Said Tembo: “For instance, some businesses were buying electricity from current and former employees, the effect of which was that the corporation was deprived of the much needed cash flow e.
“The corporation had to find funds from other sources to pay producers for maintenance and expansion of the grid and fault clearance. Electricity theft through meter tampering and bypasses were rampant.”
He said Escom then embarked on meter inspection and global position system mapping, which assisted in identifying customers who were involved in illegal connections.
Tembo said these initiatives improved revenue generation and financial performance of the corporation as Escom increased its customer base from 572 000 to 655 000.
When contacted Egenco senior public relations manager Moses Gwaza asked for more time to comment on the exact investment in Kapichira repair works, but information from the company’s website said K10 billion was used to bring back the power station in 2022.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Energy’s dream of attaining 1000MW of electricity supply by 2025 from the current 554.25MW lies in jeopardy as foreign exchange scarcity delayed most Independent Power Producers (IPPs) projects.
Ministry of Energy Principal Secretary Engineer Alfonso Chikuni, while admitting the setback in an earlier interview, said the government is banking on the interconnector project.
He said most IPPs have failed due to forex challenges, but added that the country could tap up to 300MW from the Southern African Power Pool (Sapp) through the Mozambique Power Interconnector.
Said Chikuni: “Unfortunately, after the unbundling of the sector to improve the generation aspect, the IPPs have not been moving at the required pace due to forex scarcity. For instance, JCM Power and Serengeti are still struggling to access foreign exchange.
“The foreign exchange situation that we are facing in the country, we believe, is also barring other IPPs from coming to invest in the country although we did not conduct a special study on this.”
According to figures from the Ministry of Energy, out of the 11 IPPs that were projected to add 343.26MW by 2023/24, only four succeeded; namely 80MW JCM Power (Salima and Golomoti), 21MW Serengeti Plant in Nkhotakota, 8.2MW Mulanje Hydro in Mulanje and 3.06MW Mulanje Cedar.
Meanwhile, Malawi is expected to sign a $500 million power compact next year in Tanzania. The compact is a joint venture initiative called Project 300 by the World Bank and African Development Bank. Through Project 300, the two institutions seek to connect about 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030.
