By Mphatso Nkuonera
LILONGWE-(MANA)-Minister of Energy Jean Mathanga has outlined remedies to deal with blackouts and has assured that by December loadshedding will be cut by half.
In an exclusive interview with the Malawi News Agency, Mathanga said the government expects repairs at Nkula hydropower station and 50 megawatts (MW) of imported power from Mozambique to cut loadshedding by half by December.
“The restoration of these EGENCO power plants will help us to reduce loadshedding by half,” Mathanga said.
She said the system is currently short of 42MW due to the outage of one machine and reduced capacity on others with worn-out parts.
Nkula B unit 6, where 20MW was lost, is being finalised, while spare parts for Nkula A are expected in November, with work completed by December to recover 11MW.
“We have assisted EGENCO to swiftly attend to faults through spare parts procurement,” she said.
The Mozambique interconnector was technically commissioned in August 2026 and awaits commercial arrangements.
Mathanga said, “the imports will allow us to supply industrial customers to reduce their exposure to load-shedding and improve their productivity.”
According to Mathanga, government considers reducing blackouts as a need that requires immediate attention.”
She said short-term measures include a Net-metering Framework allowing producers of up to 500kW to feed excess power into the grid.
Thirty-four have been identified and will add 3.88MW. Egenco will also build a 2.5MW battery storage system at Salima Nanjoka Solar power plant, and diesel backup generators will continue to be used at peak times.
On longer-term solutions, she said Escom will upgrade 350 transformers under the ASCENT project, while the Mpatamanga Hydro Power Project is meant to add 358MW by 2032.
She added that Studies are complete to upgrade the Lakeshore line and build a new line to the north via Kasungu.
She acknowledged that “frequent power cuts are restricting industries to reach their optimum production levels,” but said “we will continue to work on immediate solutions and long term targets to ensure the issues are addressed.”
She said the problems did not begin under the current administration.
She said: “It has come to our realization that in the past five years Escom and Egenco had not been carrying out enough routine preventive maintenance for the system equipment.”
The ministry has since asked Escom and Egenco to prioritise frequent maintenance of equipment.
Demand for electricity has also increased. By December 2025, more than 190,000 customers were connected to the grid.
Several stakeholders have urged the government to fix the electricity challenge which they say has chocked economic activities.
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