Africa-Press – Malawi. The Airport Developments Limited (ADL) has announced finalisation of all processes to expand the solar farm project at Kamuzu International Airport (KIA) to contribute more into the nation’s power supply.
This has come at a time when the country is still facing difficulties in power supply when a lot of areas across the country are experiencing more blackouts due to load shedding of about 4-6 hours per day.
In an interview with Malawi News Agency on Thursday, ADL’s engineering Manager, Sunganani Dzinkambani said the idea is to increase capacity to make the solar farm sustainable as well as more power secure because this project is not only for the Airport but also Malawi at large.
“This has helped us vastly economically in terms of reduction in our ESCOM bills, and also it’s a part of motivation for us to have an expanded facility which adds more capacity to what we make here at the Airport in terms of power supply,” he said.
Dzinkambani added that their target is to reach 5 megawatts in contributing a lot to the country’s power grid come 2024. ‘’ In our strategic plan, we want to reach our target but we will obviously move in phases in order to achieve that and we are looking at beyond 2024.
“We have a follow up Japanese project which is to habilitate this facility, so after this we intend to see how we can expand to add more capacity to the grid quiet likely even feature proof or modernise it.” he added.
Commenting on the matter, one of the experts of energy in the country, Grain Malunga, said this is a positive way to ensure the country has a greater supply of energy from a range of renewable sources.
“This is a way to go because through this, it is a well-known fact that the company will generate revenue in reduction of bills as well as getting something from the project that will help the company to sustain their needs,” he said.
However, Malunga noted that this solar farm project expansion is important when it comes to renewable energy since it will mitigate climate change. “As you are well aware that solar farms harness energy from the sun to create clean and renewable electrical energy, unlike fossil fuels such as coal.
“Generating electricity from renewable sources like solar power, creates no emissions that are harmful to human health and the environment as well reduce global warming hence the need to expand this facility to add more power,” he noted.
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