Extended load shedding Ends Sunday—Escom

Malawians will breathe a sigh of relief come Sunday because Escom’s extended load shedding, that has riled business operators and households since the start of September, will end, but power outages, particularly during peak periods will still continue.

Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) officials gave this explanation on Wednesday when they conducted the media and their corporate customers on a tour of Kapichira Hydro Power Station—the intake, power house and switch yard—to appreciate works being done under Kapichira phase II project which is expected to add on 64 megawatts (MW) to the national grid by December this year.

This means that by Sunday, the 64MW from Kapichira Phase I, which reduced the 282MW installed capacity by 23 percent, subjecting Malawians to extended load shedding, will be back on the national grid.

Earlier, Escom said the two power generating plants installed under phase I in 2000 and those being installed under phase II share the same water conveyance structures constructed such as dam, intake, water tunnel, penstocks and power house constructed under phase I.

The parastatal argued that since all the four Kapichira power generating plants are housed in the same power house and share the same water conveyance pipes, this meant that for the phase II plants to be connected to their branch of water conveyance pipe, the entire power station had to be shut down, the intake gates closed and water removed from both the tunnel and water conveyance pipe (penstocks).

Escom’s director of generation Evance Msiska told journalists that works on Kapichira Power Station being undertaken by China Gezuba is progressing according to plan and are not foreseeing any problems in terms of the completion date

He said when they bring back phase one of Kapichira on Sunday, there will be no change in terms of load shedding and Malawians will go back to the situation as it was before August 31.

“However, these works were being done for a purpose to connect to phase one of the original equipment to the new equipment and after this weekend we will start commissioning works for the first two machines which will give us 64 megawatts.

“And we expect the first machine of phase II should be on line by end of October, that will give us 32 megawatts [and] this means load shedding will decrease because we will have an additional power, and things will improve further, if it works out according to plan, by end of December when the second machine [32MW] will be on line,” explained Msiska.

According to Escom, the installation of power generating plants is on schedule with 90 percent of the works complete on the first plant and 70 percent on the second plant while transmission line construction has been partially completed.

Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) programmes officer Noel Kaponya, who was part of the tour, expressed satisfaction with the work, saying they expected improved service delivery by December.