It has emerged that 84.3 megawatts (MW) is off the national electricity grid due to faults on machines at three hydropower stations with costs estimated at $2.5 million (about K4.3 billion) to secure spare parts.
Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) chief operations officer Maxwell Mulimakwenda and Parliamentary Committee on Natural Resources and Climate Change chairperson Werani Chilenga revealed this in separate interviews.
Electricity Generation Company Limited (Egenco) chief executive officer Maxon Chitawo said for the Kapichira machine, they are awaiting a quotation from Chinese manufacturer.
He said: “You may recall that they came to Malawi two weeks ago to conduct the assessment at Kapichira Power Station. Once they finalise the list of required materials and labour, they will provide us with a quotation.
“Regarding the machine at Tedzani, we only need $172 000 [about K300 million]. We have these resources available, but we are waiting for the bank process to be completed. Once that is done, the international team will come to the country to fix the machine.”
Chitawo said for the machine at Nkula, no additional funds are needed.
“We have spare parts internally, and work is in progress to bring the machine back online. We are hopeful that the machine will be operational within the next five days. However, we require $2.5 million to procure critical parts for most of the machines currently running. “
The goal, he said is to ensure that every critical part is available as this will reduce the time it takes to fix the machines when they break down.
Yesterday, Egenco announced in a statement that a 20MW unit at Nkula B Hydro Power Station, a 32.4MW unit at Kapichira Hydro Power Station and a 31MW unit at Tedzani Hydro Power Station are not operational.
Speaking in an interview yesterday, Mulimakwenda said Escom is receiving 310MW of hydropower from Egenco out of an expected 400MW, forcing the company to extend loadshedding to five hours per day.
He further said that the company uses solar energy to complement hydropower, but added that its contribution is diminished when the weather is cloudy because Escom has no capacity to conserve the energy.
In a separate interview, Chilenga said he was informed about the required funding to rectify the problems that his committee was planning to engage the Reserve Bank of Malawi on the issue.
“We want the machines to be fixed so that Egenco should generate electricity at full capacity while taking advantage of the adequate water levels before the dry season sets in,” he said.
In its statement on Tuesday, Egenco said experts from the original manufacturer in China were in Malawi between April 20 and 28 to assess the fault at Kapichira and are expected to return with the required expertise and spare parts to fix the switchgear.
On the unit at Tedzani which is out of service due to burnt generator stator windings, Egenco has so far signed a contract with the original equipment manufacturers to rectify the fault.
Malawi has a total installed capacity of 554.24 megawatts (MW) comprising 401.8MW from hydropower, 51.4MW from diesel power generation and 101MW from solar sources.
