Blackout nightmares end December—Egenco

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lectricity Generation Company (Egenco) has said the current blackouts in the country will end in December this year when Kapichira Power Plant, which was damaged by Cyclone Ana on January 24 and 25 2022, will resume generation to full capacity.

In a Government Faces the Press in Lilongwe yesterday Egenco chief executive officer (CEO) William Liabunya said the development will bring back the 130 megawatts (MW) which were lost after the destruction of the hydro power plant leading to the current blackouts in the country.

“As a country, our base load is 390MW so anything below this leads to power shortage. After Kapichira was destroyed, we lost 130MW; that means the base load went far much down,” he said.

However, he said the power shortage problem will be sorted out by December 22 2022 when maintenance work at Kapichira which has already started with support from the World Bank is expected to be completed.

Said Liabunya: “The nature of works is that we will do both civil and electrical works and the designs will be completed by 15th September. After that, actual works will start and we will be back by 22nd December 2022 and that means blackouts will go.”

He said apart from that, the company is undertaking other projects such as maintenance works on Tedzani Power Plant, procuring adequate spares for instant repairs in case of damage and working on risk management system.

On load shedding which many Malawians are complaining about, Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) chief executive officer (CEO) Kamkwamba Kumwenda said the exercise will continue until Kapichira is back.

He said sometimes people wonder why the load shedding schedule is not adhered to but the reason is that sometimes the availability of projected power changes unexpectedly.

“We may plan to get 300 megawatts from Egenco and 60 megawatts from Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and then due to some challenges, the IPPs provide 20MW. That means we are short by 40MW, so that is the reason some areas get unexpected load shedding.”

Earlier, Minister of Energy Ibrahim Matola accused the previous administration of plunging electricity utility companies into the current mess through interference in the operations of the entities.

He said politicians in the previous administration were forcing the utility companies to misprocure and bypass laws governing operations of public utility entities.

“They were forcing the power utility companies to procure materials which would not be used and they were using utility vehicles to ferry party followers to political parties thereby draining resources of the public entities.

“To make matters worse, some of them were drawing fuel for their personal cars from Escom. Others were even getting electricity units for free. That is why these companies are in this mess today,” said Matola who wept as he lamented the utilities’ situation.

Kumwenda substantiated Matola’s sentiments by adding that in one case, the previous government made Escom to pay for land in Lilongwe at K30 million and later it transpired that the land which was ‘bought’ does not belong to the entity.

He also said in another case, Escom received a K4 billion consignment of materials which cannot be used in Malawi but efforts to reject the consignment did not work.

Minister of Information and Digitalisation Gospel Kazako cautioned the two entities to ensure that power is restored to normality by the date they have promised.