Malawians to brace for more power outages

Malawians should brace for more power outages as Electricity Generation Company (Egenco) is set to shut down Tedzani Four Power Plant due to maintenance works.

According to a statement from Egenco, the inspection exercise and maintenance works to fix damages caused by cyclone Ana are to be carried out at the plant which produces 19 megawatts of power.

The statement has disclosed that operations at Tedzani four will be temporarily suspended from Monday 25th to Friday 29th April 2022.

At Tedzani IV, floods pushed rock boulders into the water exit channel of the machine making it impossible for EGENCO to close the water channel when they want to dewater the channel.

Egenco further says the work will involve building an isolating wall around the mouth of the exit channel to create a dry working area to facilitate removal of the rock boulders.

“To minimize the impact of the outages the company has commissioned a 10 megawatts machine at Tedzani 2 which was undergoing rehabilitation works since December 2021,” EGENCO adds

However, the closing of Tedzani four power plant comes amidst already existing electricity shortages in the country due to damages caused by the two cyclones and the phasing out of the Aggreko contract.

Egenco is currently generating 200 megawatts of power against its total capacity of 400 megawatts.