Mozambique will make a further 100 megawatts of electricity available to help South Africa face its current energy crisis, the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Carlos Zacarias, announced in Pretoria on 12 June.
The minister was responding to a request for additional power made by the South African government at a meeting in Maputo on 29 May.
"The Mozambican government has immediately available 100 megawatts of power generated at the Nacala floating power station (off the coast of the northern province of Nampula)", said Zacarias. "The commercial agreement defining the price, the transmission mechanisms, and the start of channelling the power will be closed very soon".
For his part, Kgosientsho Ramokgoba, the Minister in the South African Presidency for Energy, thanked the Mozambican government for its quick response. "We were hoping for 80 megawatts, and today we received a promise of 100 MW", he said. "The technical staff must now work to make the operation viable".
He declared that the Mozambican electricity will reduce the high costs of South Africa's current electricity deficit. The shortage of electricity has forced the South African power utility, Eskom, to introduce a regime of rotating power cuts, known as "load shedding".
At the meeting, Zacarias also announced that, within six months, Mozambique will have a further 600 megawatts available, from the Ressano Garcia gas-fired power station, on the border with South Africa, and from the planned Maputo floating power station.
The floating facility in the Bay of Nacala is the Turkish owned "Karpowership (Mozambique) Mehmet Bay power station", which generates 125 megawatts, sold to the Mozambican electricity company, EDM, under a ten-year contract. A second Karpowership floating station might be mounted on a ship in the Bay of Maputo. However, this is far from certain, due to environmental concerns.
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There are other major power projects on the drawing board, notably the Temane Thermal Power Station, in Inhambane province, which should generate 450 megawatts as of January 2025, using the natural gas from the Pande and Temane onshore fields as its fuel.
In the longer term, a new hydroelectric dam at Mphanda Nkuwa, on the Zambezi will be built, about 60 kilometres downstream from the existing dam at Cahora Bassa. It will generate 1,500 megawatts by 2030.
The five giant turbines at Cahora Bassa can, in theory, generate 2,075 megawatts. Most of this power is already sold to Eskom.
Plans to build the Mphanda Nkuwa dam, and a second power station at Cahora Bassa, have been delayed for decades, because of Eskom's reluctance to sign a firm agreement on the purchase of more Mozambican power.
