Authorities have announced that government is preparing a new Power System Master Plan (PSMP) as a strategy to solve the country's energy crisis.

The PSMP is expected to take into consideration the country's macro-economic projections, revised energy policies that include the diversification of energy resources to reduce over-reliance on hydro power, supporting unsuppressed demand growth and rolling out regional grid interconnections.

Tanzania's Commissioner for Energy and Petroleum, Eng. Bashir Mrindoko said recently at the official opening of the 5th Annual Engineers' Day that the arrangement would also put in place supportive legal and a regulatory regime by either replacing the old sector legislation with a new legislation or enacting new legislation to foster private investment.

"Power sector reforms will be systematically pursued to allow faster growth of the sector," he said.

The government formulated the strategy to assist TANESCO to manage the power crisis in the short term between 2006-2010.

In the medium term (2006-2010), the government, under the regional cooperation portfolio will promote the interconnection of the national electricity grid to neighbouring power grids to participate in regional electricity trading market and become a net exporter of electricity.

"The government has initiated studies to map wind, geothermal and small hydropower potentials in the country," Mrindoko said.

The energy balance in Tanzania is dominated by biomass-based fuels particularly fuel-wood, which are the main sources of energy to both urban and rural areas.

Biomass based fuels account for more than 90% of primary energy supply.

Commercial energy sources-petroleum and electricity, account for 8% and 1.2% respectively.

Other abundant, but not fully tapped energy resources include hydropower, coal, natural gas, solar, wind and geothermal energy.

Hydropower potential is estimated at 4.7 GW, coal reserves at about 1,500 million tonnes, of which 304 million tonnes are proven.