(Tanzania is on our "excessively hydropower-dependent" map, see http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/5808)
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Tanzania: Power Woes Won't End Soon, Ngeleja Cautions
Lucas Liganga
15 February 2011
The power crisis is not likely to end this year, the government said yesterday, and as it announced a number of measures to address the recurrent problem.
Energy and Minerals minister William Ngeleja said in a ministerial statement to Parliament that an average shortfall of 264MW was forecast on the national grid due to long spells of drought.
He said there would still be a shortage of 67MW even if there were enough rains to fill all the generation dams feeding hydroelectricity stations.
Mr Ngeleja said the remedial measures the government was taking included providing money to buy fuel for the 80MW Independent Power Tanzania Limited (IPTL) generators in Dar es Salaam. The government would also ensure that the 100MW and 60MW power generation projects in Dar es Salaam and Mwanza were completed in December and next January, respectively.
Reacting to the minister's statement, the chairman of the parliamentary committee on energy and minerals, Mr January Makamba, said the measures were not new.
"We are in a crisis. The economy is bleeding. The government is losing revenue," Mr Makamba told The Citizen in an interview shortly before he convened a meeting of the committee at parliament buildings.
"The manufacturing industry, both small and medium, which is the engine of the economy, has been badly hit," he said, adding: "We need an urgent solution now to rescue our economy."
Energy and Minerals shadow minister John Mnyika (Chadema) told The Citizen: "This is a very serious matter that should be above narrow interests and partisan politics. We need to take some drastic measures if we are find an urgent solution" He said the minister's statement was "not satisfactory", and urged the government to nationalise Dowans generators and start producing electricity immediately.
The Ubungo MP said he did not understand why the government had "refused" to treat the power crisis as a national emergency.
In his 12-page statement, Mr Ngeleja said the government was also in the process of leasing a 260MW generator in case the rains fall short as expected.
He said a plan to increase the capacity of the gas pipeline from Songo Songo Islands in Kilwa District to Dar es Salaam was at an advanced stage. Power generation and supply would stabilise once the project was completed in 2015, he added.
The Speaker of the National Assembly, Ms Anne Makinda, last week directed Mr Ngeleja to issue a government statement on the crisis, which began last November.
The minister said the country's installed power generation and distribution capacity was 1,006MW, of which 561MW was the maximum capacity of hydro stations and 445MW capable of being produced by generators running on natural gas and heavy furnace oil.
However, he said drought coupled with wear and tear at stations such as Mtera had greatly reduced the generation capacity.
As a result, hydro plants were feeding only 180MW into the national grid, while 280MW was produced by natural gas and heavy furnace oil generators.
"This means that only 470MW is currently being produced, which is equivalent to 67 per cent of national capacity," Mr Ngeleja said, adding that it was the 230MW shortfall that had led to the current rationing.
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The minister said Tanesco was finding it difficult to keep pace with the ever-increasing demand for power, adding that the current peak demand was 833MW, up from 729MW in 2008.
He blamed Tanesco's limited capacity on, among other factors, laxity by the Public Sector Reform Commission in privatising the state-owned utility between 1997 and 2005, and the controversial with South African-based Net Group Solutions, which managed the struggling firm from 2004 to 2006.
The minister said the government was incurring "huge" losses as a result recurrent power crises, citing the $331.309 million (Sh496 billion at current exchange rates) loss in 2006 after Tanesco had failed to deliver over 287 million units of energy.
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