Botswana’s Energy Crisis…
January 21, 2008 at 8:45 am | In 1 | 4 CommentsTags: botswana, bpc, crisis, electricity, energy, eskom, mmamabule, morupule, power, sapp
In the face of a looming electrical power shortage crisis i would like to know what my country s doing about it…
There has been a spate of power blackouts in our neighboring country, South Africa. Bear in mind that the South African power utility, Eskom, supplies at least 80% of Botswana power needs to BPC. Now Eskom has decided that it needs to carry out load shedding in order to curb their own crisis back at home, this means that over the next three to four years they are going to reduce their supply to Botswana. So next year Botswana is facing a shortfall of about 60MW – where is that going to be sourced from? Your guess is as good as mine! Word in the street is that Morupule has the capacity to produce more, i dont know how true that is – but apparently in 2010 Morupule will be able to supply enough to cover the shortfall? And then there is Mmamabule – OK, maybe the future is not so dull after all – but my concern is before all these are fully operational is Botswana going to be in the dark?
We could buy from Mozambique – at least thats what i heard from the press – but apparantly because we have to use the Zimbabwean grid for that it seems they do not have the capacity for such transmission – but the grid is interconnected – i think we used to get a fair share from Zims before the economic collapse. That said – our neighbours Namibia have invested about ZAR4 billion in the form of a loan to Zimbabwe to run a certain coal station in Zims – repayment of the loan is supply by Zims to Namibia over a perid of 5 years of 130MW (not sure about figure though) – did someone say Zims does not have the infrastructure – well, mabye its politics!
There is this thing called the SAPP (Southern Africa Power Pool) – i thought the purpose of this pool was to ensure that all countries in the region enjoy an uninterrupted energy supply because even the entire grid amongst member countries is interconnected – i guess i was mistaken!
Question – what is Botswana’s stand so far?
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I think part of the problem lies with the ESKOM monopoly which sells power for less than it costs to produce. BPC were happy to buy cheap power and sell it on to us at a good profit. Theoretically they then used these profits to develop our infrastructure, but not our generating capacity. So we have a well developed grid to distribute power, but a very small generating capacity.
ESKOM did advise their government that they needed to build more capacity several years ago. The government responded by telling ESKOM that new generating capacity would be built by the private sector. The private sector were told that they would have to sell the power that they produced to ESKOM at ridiculously low rates. They declined saying that the price of electricity in South Africa was much too low to offer a reasonable return on investment.
So the answer to our current problem is to double the price of electricity. This will generate more income for ESKOM and cause consumers to curtail their consumption.
Comment by Alan — January 30, 2008 #
The problem is that South Africa have to care for all the black countries that have chase the whites away and cant make it on their own now, I think its time that South Africa start to care about there own people and forget about the rest of africa. South Africa dont need a hopeless Africa
Comment by Thomas — February 1, 2008 #
Thomas im sorry i can not really comment much on your racial issues u might have to find another platform to air your views. But thanks anyways…
Alan, remember in Botswana provisison of electricity is regarded as a social obligation and fuel poverty is still quite high so doubling prices may cripple our economy because that small companies wonr be able to operate at reasonable profit anymore.
Personally i would suggest domestic supply rationing of electricity supply if possible…allow every household a certain amount per month or per day…if one goes over the limit they are cut off and have to wait for their next ration – prices can increase too but by a small margin – i think that way peope will switch off those unnecesary lights and geysers during the day!
Comment by enigma4795 — February 4, 2008 #
Thomas is wrong and his comment is recist: “The problem is that South Africa have to care for all the black countries that have chase the whites away and cant make it on their own now, I think its time that South Africa start to care about there own people and forget about the rest of africa. South Africa dont need a hopeless Africa”.
Comment by Matthews Bantsijang — June 12, 2009 #