Power supply back to normal

* Repair works completed ahead of time — as at 12h30 today (Saturday) four machines were back on line

* EGENCO expects to have all five machines — including the one which broke down on December 5 because of the problem — to be back online also by end of today

* ESCOM’s continued load shedding programme, is due to loss of 130 megawatts of power at Kapichira Hydro Power Station

* President Chakwera set a deadline of December that Kapichira should start generating the power it lost

By Duncan Mlanjira

After an agonizing 3 days of nationwide electricity challenges, Electricity Generation Company (EGENCO) has finally completed repairs to its damaged machines at Nkula B Power House that started on Thursday, December 15 at 08h00.

A statement from EGENCO says the repairs works on Nkula B’s bypass pipe on Unit 4 penstock was supposed to finish on Monday, December 19 but has completed ahead of time — as at 12h30 today (Saturday) four machines were back on line.

The company expects to have all five machines — including the one which broke down on December 5 because of the problem — to be back online also by end of today.

EGENCO says its engineers, technicians, divers and support staff worked around the clock from Thursday to complete ahead of time and thanks all stakeholders and the general public for their understanding and patience during this time.

“We fully understand how critical electricity is to the modern day of life and we sincerely continue to regret any inconvenience caused by the emergency outage of Nkula B Power Station.”

The repair works led to loss of 100 megawatts of power and on Friday, Electricity Supply Corporation (ESCOM) announced that they were experiencing increased instability of the power system due to the  reduction in supply that rendered its system to become volatile and very sensitive to on-and-off switchings thereby affecting implementation of load shedding programme.

ESCOM’s continued load shedding programme, is due to loss of 130 megawatts of power at Kapichira Hydro Power Station due to January’s fierce Cyclone Ana.

President Lazarus Chakwera set a deadline of December that Kapichira should start generating the power it lost and in October, the President visited the power station to appreciate progress made and was assured by EGENCO that they would meet the deadline.

The generation plant Kapichira Dam was not affected by the Cyclone but its dam — which is being rebuilt.

In August, a joint Parliamentary Committee, that was constituted to get to the bottom cause of the national power shutdowns, went on fact-finding mission by physically visiting hydro power stations at Nkula, Kapichira, Tedzani and at the diesel generation plant at Mapanga along Zomba Road.

The joint committee comprised natural resources & climate change; trade, industry & tourism; legal affairs and public appointments, which had earlier summoned heads of ESCOM; EGENCO; Power Market Limited (PML); Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority (MERA) and Ministry of Energy at Parliament.

This also followed a hot press conference that Ministries of Energy and Information held last week that was also attended by chief executive officers of ESCOM, Kamkwamba Kumwenda; EGENCO’s William Liabunya and PML’s Rosemary Mkandawire — where Matola accused the previous administration of plunging the electricity utility companies into the current mess which has led the utility companies failing to provide adequate electricity.

The joint Parliamentary Committee first visited Kapichira Hydro Power Station to assess impact of the damage caused by Cyclone Ana and progress of restoring the 130 MW of power that has led to continued load shedding that last up to 10 hours a day with some parts of the country having no electricity at all.

The Committee was well assured by EGENCO management of their efforts to restore Kapichira Dam and were taken on tour of works being done of drenching the sand that the floods gathered so that they could divert flow of water to the intake to start the process of building a cofferdam

The cofferdam will serve two purposes — to allow EGENCO to partially fill the reservoir and resume generation of power and for neighbouring Shire Valley Transformation Programme (SVTP) to continue construction of its own intake of the Shire Valley irrigation project.

The MP’s were taken through the process of restoration by EGENCO’s project manager, Harry Msosa, who emphasized that it will be done in two phases; — to temporarily construct the cofferdam around mouth of the damaged fuse plug (an emergency spillway) and as soon as power generation is restored, to reconstruct the whole dam structure with an improved design.

He said this is under ‘Build Back Better’ for a resilient dam that should withstand the frequent floods the country is experiencing as a result of climate change and catchment area degradation.

Nkula, which was commissioned in the 60s, has undergone numerous rehabilitation but still needs to be restored with modern equipment that can enable it to generate more megawatts of power.

All three hydro plants faces challenges of siltation because of upland’s environmental degradation and needs daily drenching exercises, which are costly.

One of the co-chairperson of the joint committee, Simplex Chithyola Banda indicated that they would compile a conclusive report which is yet to be made public but expressed satisfaction of efforts of the management of Kapichira, Nkula, Tedzani and other key energy sectors to restore normal and sustainable power supply.

The continued power challenges has been blamed on system failures by both EGENCO and ESCOM — prompting the public to vent their anger on management of the two companies and on Ministry of Energy — as well as the country’s leadership — for failure to explain and solve the crisis.