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Uganda: Fuel Shortage Jolts Energy
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The Monitor (Kampala)
16 January 2008
Posted to the web 15 January 2008
Barbara Among
Kampala
The Uganda government is considering generation of more megawatts of hydropower to fill the gap created by a reduction in the amount of thermal power caused by the fuel shortage.
Due to the fuel crisis that loomed in the country for two weeks, the amount of thermal power generated from the two plants-at Jinja and Lugogo in Kampala- reduced from 100 mega watts (MW) to an average of 55MW.
The State Minister for Energy, Mr Simon D'ujanga told this paper that government plans to increase the number of megawatts of hydropower generated from the Owen dam complex in Jinja.
"We are trying to reduce the fuel consumption by half. We had a meeting with officials from the Directorate of Water Development (DWD) to see if we can get permission to release more water, probably, if we can run at 1000 cubic-metres per second as it was done in November," said Mr D'ujanga.
Uganda faces a crippling energy crisis - caused partly by drought that has more than halved hydropower generation to 131MW against an installed capacity of 380MW.
In the face of this crisis, the government contracted a private firm, Aggreko, to supply 100MW of expensive thermal power; however its generation capacity has been affected by the fuel shortage that hit the country in the past two weeks.
Already, Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Ltd (UETCL) has directed power Distribution Company-UMEME to increase the load shedding to 24 hours from 12 hours. The day time load shedding will now run from 0800 till 1700 hours and the evening load shedding will run from 1700 till 0800 hours.
Ugandans will have to also contend with an additional 12-hour overnight load shedding, running from 1900 till 0800 hours at randomly selected days of the week.
"This month in particular we have been informed by UETCL that we will be load shedding highly because of lack of availability. There is also supplementary load shedding," said Mr Robert Kisubi, Umeme's Communication Manager.
UETCL attributes the increased number of load shedding to the falling Lake levels and the on-going fuel shortage.
Uganda Electricity Generation Company, Managing Director Dan Mayanja told this paper that the current Lake levels can generated up to 151MW, however an average of 131MW is currently being generated from the Nalubaale and Kiira power stations.
Mayanja said that because of the adopted release policy, the 'agreed curve' which ensures that the releases through the dam correspond to the natural flow before the dam was constructed, the amount generated is much less.
Lake levels stood at 11.26 meters above sea level as of end of December last year, this allowed for generation of 165MW of power during the months of November and December, eliminating load shedding in the districts of Kampala and Entebbe.
Starting this January however, Generation Company reduced production to the current 131MW to compensate for the excess water release during the Commonwealth head of government meeting in Kampala last November.
It is also feared that the long drought expected in the first quarter of this year would father reduce Lake Levels to below 11 meters above sea level experienced in the last quarter of 2007.
In the face of this crisis, the country will have to depend more on expensive thermal power.
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Uganda uses 2.1 million litres of fuel per day, thermal power generation accounts for 50 percent of this.
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