Electricity load shedding to ease January end
Malawians should expect to continue experiencing some level of blackouts as the Electricity Generation Company of Malawi (Egenco) has recovered just 32.4 megawatts (MW) from the 84.8MW lost to technical challenges.
The power generation firm lost two units at Kapichira with a combined generation capacity of 64.8 megawatts (MW) and one unit at Nkula B, which produces 20MW due to turbine mechanical failures in December 2024.

at 75 percent. | Courtesy of Egenco
This left the grid with 305.7MW from the total 390.55MW generated from the hydropower plants.
In the initial plan, Egenco said one unit at Kapichira is expected to be back online within 10 days, with the second unit within 25 days, while it said the one unit at Nkula B would take at least five days.
However, in an interview yesterday, Egenco spokesperson Moses Gwaza said one unit at Kapichira has been restored, while the 20MW unit at Nkula B is expected to be ready by Sunday.
He said: “Now that we have restored one unit at Kapichira, attention has turned to the Nkula unit, which requires working on shaft seals. Actually, this one unit at Nkula was working, but restricted to 13MW, so now we need to restore it to full capacity.
“So, for the second unit at Kapichira, this will be ready by this month end because there is a lot more work needed on it. Our engineers have removed the turbine and are refurbishing it. As we stand, Kapichira is at 75 percent,” he explained.
Kapichira has four machines with a total generation capacity of 129.6MW, each producing 32.4 MW, while Nkula B has five machines, each rated 20MW.
To mitigate the impact of this outage, Egenco said it would utilise all available generators to supplement the available hydro capacity.
Speaking to The Nation earlier this week, Egenco chief executive officer Maxon Chitawo said backup power generators with about 40MW capacity are on standby in the event of damage to one of the existing stations owing to the ongoing rainy season.
Meanwhile, in its load shedding schedule for January 13-18 2025, Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) customers are divided in six groups with three experiencing blackout at least three hours per day.
Escom has also said while there are solar plants to contribute towards availability of electricity, random fluctuations in intensity of sunshine may affect solar power production leading to load shedding outside the planned load shedding programme.
Egenco has a total installed generation capacity of 441.95MW, with 390.55MW from hydro power plants and 51.4MW from standby diesel power plants.