Africa-Press – Botswana. The Minister of Minerals and Energy, Ms Bogolo Kenewendo has commended Morupule B Power Station team for their dedication in maintaining the country’s power supply over the past few weeks.
Minister Kenewendo commended the team during her visit to Morupule B Power Station and Morupule Coal Mine (MCM) on Thursday.
The minister noted that the country had been experiencing challenges in power supply and therefore there was a need to further interrogate the issues and come up with solutions.
“We have been inundated with the problems and we have to think about the future while we are solving the problems of today,’’ she said, emphasising that it was important to stabilise production because energy shortage could bring the economy to a standstill.
Noting that electricity was one of the most important infrastructure in the country, the minister said the Morupule B Power Plant team was similarly one of the most important teams in the country that the entire economy relied upon.
Ms Kenewendo said there was a lot of expectations upon those that were working on power to ensure that they stabilised production and distribution.
She pleaded with them to think creatively and innovatively to prevent frequent leaks and disruptions.
She said entities like MCM should align with the nation’s economic trajectory, emphasising that operational efficiency and alignment with the nation’s interests were paramount in harnessing the potential of coal.
Ms Kenewendo acknowledged that there had been several proposals that were presented to her such as adding more units on the side to try to bring a level of stability to power production in Botswana.
She assured the Morupule B Power Plant team that government would accord them support in the work that they were doing so that they could ensure that the rest of the country was well supported with the resource that was important to the economic development.
Botswana Power Corporation Chief Executive Officer, Mr David Kgoboko said the corporation had just come out of a challenging phase which was low generation at the power plant occasioned by breakdowns as well as the plant maintenance they had to undertake.
He was however pleased that they were currently running three units, supplying approximately 345 megawatts of power into the grid, which has to be augmented by supply from other sources including power imports. He said the minister’s visit demonstrated her resolve towards achieving stability in power generation and ultimately achieving security of supply, one of the key strategic objectives for the country.
Mr Kgoboko said there were projects that they had rolled out which he was optimistic that they would increase power generation capacity and also improve reliability of their power generation assets.
Mr Kgoboko said Morupule B Power Plant had a history of construction defects which they had been grappling with for many years and the team had done exceptionally well in trying to maintain or keep the units on the grid despite the challenges.
“Just looking at the statistics from the just ended year both our plants were able to contribute over 70 per cent of the country’s demand, which was commendable,’’ he said.
However, Mr Kgoboko said, the issue of reliability still remained because of the construction defects that he alluded to adding that there were construction defects that they need to attend to.
He informed the minister that they embarked on remedial works programme that sought to address the construction defects and so far they had one of their units having gone through remedial works, that is unit 4.
The visit facilitated high-level discussions aimed at addressing key mining and energy issues as well as to ensure strategic alignment with national development objectives.
At Morupule Coal Mine, Chief Executive Officer Mr Edwin Elias provided a comprehensive overview of the mine’s operations, including business performance, production insights, and upcoming strategic initiatives.
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