By:Nghiinomenwa-vali Erastus
Electricity utility Nampower said the recent rains had no significant impact on the Ruacana catchment area to improve local electricity generation.
This has worsened local power supply security and increased dependence on imports at the time Namibia’s electricity suppliers are facing power crunches.
However, there are some hopes as reports coming from Angola are indicating that the Cunene Province that feeds the Namibian side has received plenty of rain.
Namibia imports electricity from South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe to meet the country’s electricity demand.
NamPower informed The Villager Business Desk that despite the showers, they were inadequate to improve the flow and generation.
The Ruacana power station is a run of the river plant, with a seasonal operation of base load during the high river flow season, and mid-merit peaking during the low river flow season.
The poor rainfall recorded in the Kunene river catchment during the 2020/21 rainy season to the present resulted in a very low river flow passing through Ruacana catchment area.
Ruacana output was reduced because of low water levels preventing full-capacity hydro generation (± 347MW)
As a result of the low water flow at Ruacana, the country’s domestic generation from September 2022 to November 2022 has fallen below 90 000 MWh.
Despite the limited river flow, the Ruacana power station produced 55% of the country’s electricity for three months.
The Ruacana power station continues to be Nampower’s least costly electricity generation plant, with an installed capacity of 347 MW from four generating units.
Nampower, in its latest annual report (2021), placed the seasonal flow as one of the material risks together with climate change.
The power utility explained that climate change is resulting in rising global temperatures, erratic patterns of precipitation, and more. “This is evident from water levels at Ruacana, which have dropped significantly,” the annual report read.
The power utility said it has risk-mitigating measures in place that it is implementing, one being the power purchase agreements (PPAs). These, they said, will enable independent power producers (IPPs), including the renewable energy feed-in tariff (REFITs) programme, to complement domestic power generation, especially on renewable energy.
The intermediate strategy is, however, to run Anixas and Van Eck power stations as substitute load and to source additional/emergency energy from Southern Africa Power Pool (SAPP) from the day ahead market.
The country has power purchase agreements with South Africa (200MW), Zambia (100MW), and Zimbabwe (80MW), resulting in 380 MW of power.
However, the country’s over-reliance on Eskom as one of the biggest/primary power purchase agents has been tested to the maximum with South Africa moved into stage 6 of load shedding in late 2022, and with that country facing over 200 days of load shedding in 2022 for Africa’s most industrialised country.
Then Zimbabwe followed with random blackouts and now Zambia.
This is after the power generation capacity at the Kariba North Bank hydropower was reduced from 1080 MW to 400 MW as a result of no availability of water in the Kariba reservoir.
The Nampower team told The Villager the current situation will mean a possible reduction in the supply from Zambia.
That does, however, not necessarily mean a reduction in electricity imports.
On how much Zambia will reduce power sales to Namibia, the power utility said, “the reduction margins are being discussed in accordance with the power purchase agreement provisions”.
According to the Electricity Control Board’s 2022 annual report, Namibia’s demand is 616MW (2021), while it has only an installed generation capacity (MW)of 489.5, importing the rest from South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Email: erastus@thevillager.com.na