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| Business |
| Sadc power pool pipe-dream |
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by
Ayam Maeresa, 12 March 2003
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The Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi Limited (Escom), hit by a major crisis after flooding water crippled its power station at Nkula B Station on Sunday, said on Tuesday it will not import power to solve its domestic problems because the region’s decade-old power pool concept is still a pipe-dream.
Chief executive Douwe van Wyk said in Blantyre that the region’s interconnection plans, whose aim is to link up power grids in the 14-member Southern African Development Community (Sadc) to enable countries help each other in times of need, has not moved with the required speed.
Power authorities in the region have discussed since 1992 how best they can link up their grids but the concept has taken a slow pace towards implementation.
“We have been pushing very hard for interconnection...in fact if that was in place, the country wouldn’t have noticed [the crisis]. Unfortunately at this stage it is purely on theoretical stage,” said van Wyk.
Caused by a burst water pipe, the flooding submerged all the power generation machines at the Nkula B station, reducing Escom’s total generation capacity to 140 megawatts from 240 megawatts, against a demand of about 200 megawatts.
Only about four percent of the 11 million people in the country have access to electricity, according to statistics from the National Electricity Council (Neco).
The power crisis has affected water supply in main cities, especially for Blantyre Water Board (BWB), as Escom has drained its dam for hydro power generation at Nkula, which is also used by BWB as its source of water.
Work to repair the damaged power station will be cumbersome as Escom needs to dismantle all the five generation machines to clean them before mounting again.
Director of generation Dappa Chapalapata said the corporation maybe able to switch on at least one of the machines by end this month. Meanwhile power rationing will continue until the situation is contained, he said.
“Interconnection will have solved this type of a problem,” said van Wyk, whose corporation is yet to assess the damage caused by the flood to the 22-year old machines at the station.
Van Wyk told Nation in an earlier interview that through interconnection Escom would connect its power grid to Cabora Bassa power station in Mozambique as part of an expansion programme.
Escom was already talking to Mozambique’s power company EDM on the issue. Escom expected to get about 50 megawatts from EDM as supplementary power per year.
At the moment, Escom exports power to Zambia’s northeastern town of Lundazi through its northern region cross-border power grid. Linkage with Mozambique was to used as stepping stone to similar ventures with other power stations in the region.
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