After years of civil war, Mozambique’s hydro-electric plant is being refurbished for R575-million. Max Gebhardt reports
For nearly 12 years, as civil war ravaged our eastern neighbour, five massive hydro-electric generators, with the power to light up a small city, have been sitting idle ‘ waiting for the moment when they could return to operation.
In the second half of next year, engineers will once again flip the switch on at Cahora Bassa Dam power plant in the northern province of Tete in Mozambique.
At that moment nearly 2 000MW of hydro-electric power from the south bank power station on the Zambezi River will be transmitted over 1 400km of power lines to the Apollo substation in Midrand, near Johannesburg.
It will also mark the end of a mammoth task by the governments of South Africa, Portugal and Mozambique to refurbish and rehabilitate the Cahora Bassa hydro-electric power plant at a cost of R575-million and the Apollo substation at a cost of R60-million.
At present only 1% of Cahora Bassa is being utilised for its own internal operations and the supply of electricity to the towns of Tete, downstream from the dam, and Songo, situated alongside the dam.
The dam and its power station will be operated by Mozambican company Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB) – controlled by the Portuguese government with a minority shareholding held by the Mozambicans – and Eskom in South Africa.
The rehabilitation of the hydro-electric dam should give one of the world’s poorest nations a sorely needed kickstart to its economy. But it will have to pay Eskom for the right to the power it produces in its own backyard.
The initial agreement drawn up between HCB and Eskom was for the hydro-electric station to supply South Africa with just under 2 000MW. This was because South Africa was the only viable market that could justify the development of a project as massive as that envisioned at Cahora Bassa in 1969.
But this supply was interrupted after only three years by the civil war, and by 1982, transmission of power from Cahora Bassa ceased as the power lines and towers were extensively damaged and mined as the conflict intensified.
According to the executive director of HCB at Cahora Bassa Dam, Oliveir Costa, roughly 50% of the 900km of power lines in Mozambique were destroyed during the war.
‘This was one of our main concerns when we started working on the power plant last year, as large sections of the power lines had been mined,’ he said.
‘The work on the transmission lines is going quite fast considering the difficulties we have faced,’ he added.
The work will cost an estimated R138-million, of which two-thirds was required to repair damaged transmission lines, and a further R44-million was spent by HCB to remove landmines from the lines.
HCB is hoping to recover these amounts when the three main players at Cahora Bassa sit down to renegotiate a new tariff structure, that Eskom will have to pay, for the resumption of power from the hydro-electric dam.
The existing tariff structure was last negotiated in 1988 and an Eskom representative said talks on a new payment would only begin in earnest next year.
The revenue gained by HCB will be used by the Portuguese government to repay loans negotiated for the construction of the Cahora Bassa Project in the early 1970s and provide Mozambique with funds for agricultural and industrial projects planned for the region.
It will also go some way to allowing HCB to recoup the estimated R4,8-billion it spent on maintaining the power station during the civil war.
At the time of the project’s completion in the early Seventies, Eskom did not have any real need for the energy generated at Cahora Bassa ‘ it doesn’t even now, as the state electricity supplier still has excess capacity.
It justified its need by maintaining that not only would it free internal water supplies for other industrial, commercial or domestic needs but it would also obviate the need to build additional coal-fired power stations.
As a result, in early 1991 Eskom decided to cede 500MW to Zimbabwe, in view of the growing shortage of power in Zimbabwe and Eskom’s excess capacity. In May 1984 in Cape Town, the supply contracts were amended in recognition of the independence of Mozambique.
Eskom undertook to wheel an upper limit of 200MW through its Komatipoort line for distribution in Maputo.
This move has been welcomed by Mozambican Vice-Minister of Energy Castigo Langa: ‘The access to power will allow Mozambique to become eligible for various new investments ‘ like the proposed development of an aluminum smelter in Maputo. This in turn should have a number of other positive spin-off effects, which will allow us to address various social issues facing Mozambique,’ he said.
Alusaf has expressed interest in opening a smelter in Mozambique. This availability of power at low cost will hopefully help trigger an upsurge in the growth of light and medium industries and further development of the region surrounding the dam.
The rehabilitation of Cahora Bassa will also go a long way towards the development of a Southern African power grid, which will encompass the countries from the Southern African Development Community and stretch as far north as Zaire. Eskom generates some 85% of the electricity produced in Southern Africa.
According to Langa, there are a further 100 potential sites for hydro-electric power in Mozambique. The development of these sites could provide some relief to the impoverished nation, where blackouts in the capital Maputo are still a frequent occurrence, as its power plants were virtually all destroyed by the civil war.
The Mozambican economy is expecting its inflation to end below the 22% target for 1996, down from 40% in 1995. Langa said they were forecasting growth of at least 5% this year and were aiming at 7% for next year.
Its Parliament began debating its 1997 Budget this week and put next year’s spending at 8,196-billion ‘meticais (R3,35-billion) of which 42% will be earmarked for education and health.