09 May 2023

Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) preliminary investigations have revealed  disturbance on the Phokoje-Matimba 400Kv line which resulted in nationwide blackouts Monday and part of yesterday.

Briefing the media yesterday, BPC chief executive officer Mr David Kgoboko said the  disturbance occurred Monday resulting in loss of all power generation units at both Morupule A and B plants. 

“This is yet to be confirmed through investigations. We cannot at this stage pinpoint the real cause of the grid disturbance. More information will be availed after real root cause of this outage has been established," he said.

Mr Kgoboko has however assured the nation that work was in progress at both Morupule A and B plants stating that currently two units had successfully been restored and on full load at Morupule A. 

Unit four had been successfully restored and was back to service on full load at 150Mw by Monday while Morupule A’s unit two had been re-started and was expected back on the grid by yesterday afternoon, he said.

The BPC chief said Morupule B’s unit three was successfully synchronised at 05:45am yesterday with the expectation that it would  have reached full load by 6:00pm the same day. 

 He said unit one was under statutory maintenance conducted every 14 months and was expected back in service during the first week of next month.

 Mr Kgoboko stated that the unit previously suffered a minor defect because of the sudden trip that occurred during the system disturbance.

Repairs were ongoing, he said. 

With regard to unit two, he said it was on planned outage as it was undergoing major overhaul and was expected to be back on the grid by end of July.

On supply issues, Mr Kgoboko said national power demand ranged between 380Mw to about 600Mw at peak and that with the current local output plus imports, a deficit of about 120Mw was anticipated. 

The deficit could only be addressed by return to service of the mentioned units, he said adding that the corporation has had to institute rotational load shedding since Monday as a way of managing the crisis.

He said the situation was expected to improve by tomorrow as generation from Morupule B and A power stations returned to normal. 

As for medium to long term plans, the BPC chief said supply constraints were expected to continue over the next three years during which Morupule B units were being remedied. 

On long term strategic projects, Mr Kgoboko said the corporation would ensure adequate and reliable supply by building a 50Mw Solar Pv plant in Selebi-Phikwe.

Phase two of the project would see a similar size plant being constructed at a later stage while  the tendering process for a 100Mw plant in Jwaneng would start soon, he said.

Mr Kgoboko revealed that BPC was negotiating a power purchasing agreement with the developer of a 300Mw coal fired independent power producing plant expected to reach commercial operation in 2027. Ends