Minister of Energy, Mining and Natural Resources, Bright Msaka, has said the Electricity (Amendment) Act of 2016 has fast-tracked a number of reforms in the energy sector with more changes to be experienced upon completion of a number of projects.<\/p>\n
Among others, the act has enabled the unbundling of Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) \u2013 which now concentrates on electricity distribution \u2013 while a new company Electricity Generation Company (Egenco) is now focussing on generation.<\/p>\n
However, the combined projects in electricity generation, improvement of existing equipment and involvement of independent power producers mean a significant amount of megawatts will be added to the grid within two years since the Act was assented to in June, 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were a number of projects that did not take place in the past because the legislation was holding us back. We have made a lot of progress since 2016 and the changes so far give us confidence that we are going to meet the targets of specific projects,\u201d Msaka said.<\/p>\n
Msaka cited the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) projects as important in increasing efficiency of hydropower generation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should be appreciated that a lot of power is lost in transmission and the projects that Millennium Challenge Account has done in improving infrastructure will save the power that is being generated before shifting the focus on independent power producers who are important players to help Malawi achieve the other targets,\u201d Msaka said.<\/p>\n
At the moment, about 25 percent of power generated is lost during transmission across the country because of the old power lines and equipment. However, the improvements done on two lines by MCC \u2013 Phombeya to Nkhoma and Chintheche to Bwengu\u2014will save about 25 megawatts.<\/p>\n
Other projects aimed at improving electricity generation and distribution in Malawi include the 1.2 million led bulbs Escom distributed which has created an extra 40 megawatts; 78 megawatts of diesel generators to be on the grid this year; 46 megawatts standby (permanent) generators to be added on the grid by Escom; improvements at Nkula which will add 12 megawatts to the grid before September 2018; upgrading of Tedzani by Egenco which will add 10 megawatts on the grid; a project by Toshiba to be completed in 2019 which will add 18 megawatts to the grid and 70 megawatts from solar which has already been advertised for. All these projects and improvements of existing equipment translate into 300 megawatts to be added to the grid within the next two years.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Msaka has disclosed that the improvement in the water levels would reduce load shedding during this period and beyond Easter.<\/p>\n
\u201cApart from the annual closedown at Nkula during Easter, electricity would improve beyond Easter. This is due to opening of Liwonde Barrage and the continued rainfall in some parts of the country with tributaries to Lake Malawi,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Minister of Energy, Mining and Natural Resources, Bright Msaka, has said the Electricity (Amendment) Act of 2016 has fast-tracked a number of reforms in the energy sector with more changes to be experienced upon completion of a number of projects. Among others, the act has enabled the unbundling of Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44099,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44096\/revisions\/44099"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}