New plant to boost electricity supply

Uganda has installed a 50-megawatt (MW) thermal electricity generating plant in the capital, Kampala, to try and mitigate the impact of power rationing on the country’s industries, officials said on Wednesday. "Thermal electricity is meant to sort out day load-shedding [rationing], as it was choking businesses," Sarah Birungi, spokesperson for the Uganda Electricity Regulatory Authority, told IRIN on Wednesday. "With this generation, industries will now work normally without laying off workers, as has been the case." She said the 64-generator plant started some trial runs on Wednesday, supplying 10MW to the main national grid and all 50 MW would be supplied in the coming weeks. Uganda, whose main source of electricity is hydroelectric power, annually consumes an estimated 330 MW, but with water levels in Lake Victoria reduced due to an extended drought, the turbines in the River Nile town of Jinja are only able to produce 220 MW. A prolonged drought in neighbouring Rwanda and Tanzania, from where many of Lake Victoria’s tributaries emerge, has significantly affected the lake's water levels, reducing Uganda's hydroelectric power generation capacity, according to officials. The Dubai-based Aggreko International Power Projects has undertaken the installation of the US $30 million plant. The Minister for Energy, Syda Bumba, recently told IRIN that in addition to the drought, global warming had increased the rate of evaporation on the lake, reducing the amount of water used at the country’s two hydroelectric power stations, Kiira and Nalubaale, both east of Kampala near the source of the Nile. Uganda has stopped exporting electricity to neighbouring Kenya, and is now importing up to 20MW from its neighbours to compensate for the shortfall, which had begun to take a heavy toll on the country’s industries, forcing many workers into early retirement.