Despite stage 6 blackouts, Eskom aids Botswana amid nationwide power crisis

Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) apologised on Tuesday for a countrywide electricity blackout that  plunged the nation into unexpected load-shedding. 

BPC CEO David Kgoboko called a media briefing to update the nation “given the magnitude of the outage and impact on the country” caused by a “grid disturbance”, which knocked out both Morupule A and B power plants and a transmission line connecting Botswana to SA at midnight on Monday. The cause of the incident is under investigation. 

Tebogo Thakadu, manager of technical services at BPC, confirmed that Eskom had intervened and supplied up to 347MW on Monday evening, helping to restart the national electricity grid.

“We have not been getting any power from Eskom on account they have been load-shedding on that side. The only time we started getting assistance from them ... [was] since yesterday when we lost our internal generation, we relied on them to sustain us and start up our grid,” he said. 

Reliance on importing electricity from SA, which has been reeling under stage 6 rolling blackouts since Sunday afternoon, had been reduced to zero megawatts by 7am on Tuesday, he added. 

BPC estimated there would be an energy deficit in the country of about 120MW until its generation units were back online — barring one, which was down for scheduled maintenance. 

The power utility said in a statement on Monday: “At the time of the grid disturbance, the country was generating 505MW of electricity and exporting 60MW. We are currently restarting both our power generation plants.” 

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