Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) Limited has attributed increased power rationing to a supply deficit of between 20 megawatts (MW) and 40MW during peak hours against a demand of190MW.
Escom chief executive officer Kamkwamba Kumwenda, in an interview on the sidelines of the 2025 Public Relations Day commemoration yesterday in Blantyre, said during peak periods between 5:30am and 7:30am as well as 4:30pm to 8:30pm, electricity demand is 190MW.
He said the power utility is implementing load shedding of an average three hours and 30 minutes in most parts of the country to manage the deficit and safeguard its system from collapsing.
Said Kumwenda: “During the peak hour, the demand is about 190 MW. During the day, most of the machines are shut down because there is no demand, but during the evening, that is when we have peak demand because most people are at home, they are cooking. The deficit is about 40 MW. That is when we do the load-shedding.”
He observed that while supply is not increasing, during this time of the year, industries, including sugar, tobacco, tea and irrigation operate at full scale.
“So there will be minimal role-sharing during peak period. But this is temporal and will be history when we connect with Mozambique at the end of this year,” said Kumwenda.
Through the Malawi-Mozambique Power Interconnection Project, Mozambique will be feeding 50MW into the Malawi national grid.
Initially, Escom indicated that the project would be in place by October this year after post-election conflicts in Mozambique forced work to stop at Matambo Substation in that country’s Tete Province.
Malawi planned to tap 120MW at about $10 million (K17.4 billion) a month, but it was reduced to 50MW at about $4.5 million (about K7.8 billion) per month in the first five years.
Earlier, Consumers Association of Malawi executive director John Kapito said the additional 50MW into the national grid would help to reduce power outages.
The Malawi Government targeted to reach 1 000MW by 2025, but the target is set to be missed.
Electricity Generation Company (Malawi) Limited has a total installed generation capacity of 444.67MW, with 390.15MW from hydro power plants, 53.22MW from thermal power plants and 1.3MW from solar power plants.
