South Africa’s electricity will not affect Namibia: official

WINDHOEK, March 25 — The load-shedding in South Africa will not affect Namibia, as Namibia does not solely depend on Eskom for energy, according to Namibia’s power utility, Managing Director Kahenge Haulofu.
The question of power security in Namibia had arisen following the announcement by South Africa’s Eskom on March 18, on the implementation of the stage 4 rotational load shedding in the country.

Eskom in the statement said this is due to a shortage of capacity and the load-shedding is a highly controlled process, implemented to protect the system and to prevent a total collapse of the system or a national black.

Namibia is an active trader in the Southern African Power Pool Electricity Market and, apart from the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) it has with Eskom, Namibia also has PPA with Zimbabwe Power Corporation and Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation, Haulofu told Xinhua Monday.

According to Haulofu, the Ruacana Hydro Power Plant, located in the Northern part of the country, and the Anixas Diesel plants, are currently dispatched optimally to avert possible load-shedding in the southwestern African nation.

“Namibia enjoys an increase in locally generation energy, attributed to the national REFIT projects and other independent power producer projects that have reached completion and are actively feeding into the national grid,” he added.
Currently NamPower imports 200 MW from Eskom as per the PPA signed between the two parties of five years ending in March 2022. –