Egenco, Escom contradict on outage
Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) and Electricity Generation Company (Egenco) have given conflicting explanations on the cause of the national power outage experienced yesterday afternoon.
While Escom attributed the power outage to a system shutdown at around 2:04pm at Egenco’s Nkula B Hydro Power Station, Egenco said the problem had nothing to do with the outage.
Reads in part an Egenco statement: “We wish to inform the public that the leakage of the bypass pipe [at Nkula B] has nothing to do with the system shut down that occurred earlier today at 02:04[pm].”
Egenco admitted that there is a leakage of bypass pipe on machine number 4 at Nkula B that has a potential of flooding the power house if not repaired on time, but assured the public that there is no need to panic because the situation is under control.
It further said the affected machine, with 20 megawatts (MW) capacity, has been isolated and shutdown to allow engineers prepare for the repairs of the bypass pipe.
Further stated Egenco: “Currently, the other machines from Nkula are online and generating electricity. We will keep the public updated once we have finalised assessment of the problem and when we are starting the repairs as the situation may require that the whole station be shut down to dewater the tunnel so as to fully do the repairs.”
But Escom said due to the emergency at Nkula B, the system remained unstable.
“The restoration process started immediately and the first customers were supplied at 2:35pm. Meanwhile, the system remains unstable as Egenco has reported an emergency at Nkula B. We will continue to update the public until full restoration of power supply is attained,” reads part of the statement by Escom.
This year, Malawi has experienced several national power blackouts since the first one on January 24 due to Cyclone Ana followed by the second in February due to debris in the system following Cyclone Ana. The third one on May 13 was as a result of solar outage in Salima.
Escom further attributed the continued system shut downs to short circuit and vandalism. In May this year, Egenco spokesperson Moses Gwaza admitted that they were having difficulties maintaining power supply on the national grid following the breakdown of Kapichira Hydro Power Station.
