The Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) signed a power supply deal with South Africa’s power utility, Eskom, at beginning of this week.
Eskom was represented by its interim Chief Executive, Matshela Koko whilst his counterpart Stefan Schwarzfischer stood for BPC.
The three-year agreement replaces the initial deal that expired in 2015.
“The ended contract was a non-firm contract like the new one which will run for three years,” BPC spokesperson, Dineo Seleke explained to Sunday Standard this week.
Seleke further explained that BPC has come up with a solution to solve power supply shortage in the country and to make sure that there are no more electricity tariffs in the country.
“The Corporation is flexible to buy as much electricity as it can from Eskom depending on what the shortage would be at the time of emergency to complement local supply.
“The agreement between BPC and Eskom is basically a supplementary deal to relief the country in the event of shortage in local supply as it has been with the previous agreements between the two parties,” Seleke adds.
Meanwhile, Seleke further stated that a combination of an adjustment of tariffs in Botswana was implemented as at April 1, 2017 before the power supply deal was signed. The government made this decision in order to assist the Corporation to sustain its operations to meet growth in electricity demand, whereas the deal between BPC and Eskom is concerned with securing power supply for emergency reasons which will be used as and when it is necessary.
Seleke elaborated that the country has not experienced load shedding since 2015 and the Corporation does not envisage any in the future as Morupule B 520MW has improved and was expected to perform even better at the completion of defects remediation
More power will be generated after completion of Morupule A 120MW refurbishment works are complete at the end of December 2017.
A total of 195MW electricity stand-by generators at Matshelagabedi and Orapa will complement supplement supply from Morupule B in the event of shortage of supply (emergency situations).
