ELECTRICITY Generation Company(Malawi) Limited (Egenco) said is impressed with the progress of dredging of a water reservoir at Kapichira Power Station.
In a statement, Egenco says the station has seen 600 000 cubic metres of silt dredged since April 2020.
The water reservoir, which has a total capacity of 9 million cubic meters, with 3.5 million cubic metres of that being active storage, has been silting up for many years due to, among others, environmental degradation along the Shire catchment areas.
This has been the dam filled with silt up to 80 percent of the active storage capacity.
”This, in turn, affected power generation because of inadequate water at the reservoir rendering mostly one machine at the station to remain at standstill.” reads part of the statement.
Senior Operations Engineer at Kapichira Station, Bernard Kanyika, said the development has improved operations at the station, adding that with the removal of the 600 000 cubic meters of silt, normal power generation has resumed.
Kapichira Power Station is one of the hydropower stations operated by Egenco. It has total generation capacity of 129.60MW.
The dredger was procured at $7 million through the US$350 million Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact.
Source: The Daily Times_October 23, 2020- By Gary Samati