Government has announced that it has started importing a certain percentage of electricity for use in the country from neighbouring
The Isimba hydro-power dam was shut down last week following flooding of the power house that houses generators and turbines.
This has led to power outages in the country for the past one week.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the Energy Minister,
"The shutdown was due to operation challenges that led to the flow of water into the powerhouse. The shutdown was undertaken as a safety procedure to ensure safety of staff and protection of electro-mechanical equipment,"Nankabirwa said.
Last week, distributor,
"Some customers may be affected but the teams are working to ensure power supply from other sources,"
This has seen several parts of the country go under load shedding in the past one week.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the Energy Minister said the operator of the dam, UETCL is undertaking measures to ensure power production is restored at Isimba but said this will be done in a period of three weeks.
"The
The amount of electricity produced in
Therefore, the amount of unused power is expected to increase due to low growth in demand.
To this,
In 2019,
However, following the latest debacle at Isimba dam will now have to import at least 60 megawatts of power from
According to the Energy Minister, UETCL will also dispatch up 50 megawatts of power from Namanve Thermal Power Plant, 20 megawatts from Kakira Sugar Power Plant but also the optimization of the generation of the available power plants.
"UETCL is undertaking suspension of any planned and non-emergency shutdown or outage permits UETCL is also undertaking implementation of load shedding to balance power demand and supply and ensure that grid stability is achieved and sustained,"Nankabirwa said.
Isimba dam
Commissioned in 2019, Isimba hydro power dam cost
The dam added 183 megawatts of electricity onto the national grid.
Outages
With the current shutdown of Isimba, the country should expect power outages on several occasions after government directed UETCL to ensure implementation of load shedding to balance power demand and supply.
This means that whereas some areas will have power, others will not and vice versa for the next three weeks as works to rectify the glitch at the 183 megawatt Isimba dam continue.
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