Consumers can now breathe a sigh of relief following Electricity Generation Company’s (Egenco) completion of maintenance works at Nkula B Hydro-Power Station which will restore 100 megawatts (MW) to the national grid.

In a statement yesterday, Egenco management said the maintenance works, which involved repairing a damaged by-pass pipe, were supposed to be completed on December 19.

Part of Egenco operation sites at Nkula

This means the maintenance works, which started on December 15, have been completed ahead of timeframe.

Reads the statement in part: “As at 12:13pm today [yesterday] four machines were back online and we expect to have all five machines [including the one which broke down on December 5 2022 because of the same problem] to be back online by end of today [yesterday].

“This means that 100MW will be restored to the national grid.”

According to the statement, earlier completion of the maintenance works will reduce load-shedding hours from the extended 17.5 hours which Malawians have been facing since Thursday last week.

But in some places consumers were facing more than the 17.5 extended load-shedding hours.

Consumers Association of Malawi executive director John Kapito is on record to have expressed frustrations over the way Egenco conducts its business.

In a statement on Friday, Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) said they were experiencing increased instability in supplying power following the 100MW that was taken off the grid.

“The further reduction in power supply has rendered the system volatile and very sensitive to on and off switchings thereby affecting the implementation of the current revised load-shedding,” reads the statement.

The taking off of 100MW resulted in Escom supplying 171MW to essential services such as hospitals and water pumping stations.

The bypass pipe was damaged on December 5 2022 leading to a national power blackout.

Malawians have been experiencing blackouts since January 24 when Cyclone Ana caused floods and debris disrupted the power generation system.

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