Malawi's state generator says it is restoring its own diesel peakers, not hiring any.

For a mine or any large electricity buyer in Malawi, the question of what covers the evening peak now has a date against it. The state generation company says the diesel units it already owns, at Mapanga, Kanengo, Lilongwe A and Lubinga, are partly out of service for want of critical spare parts, foreign exchange shortages having blocked those purchases for three years, and that its plan is to return them to service to supplement hydropower when demand peaks. A press release dated 7 September 2026 also rejects reports that the company has hired, or intends to hire, diesel generators from inside or outside the country.

Government has allocated about US$8.1 million for critical spares covering both the hydropower stations and the diesel plant. The company says the most critical items are already paid for, and that every currently idle diesel unit should be back online by December 2026.

The same statement disputes a reported monthly running cost of MK32.3 billion, saying the figure came from multiplying an assumed 500 litres an hour for each machine by the pump price of fuel, by 23 machines, by 16 hours a day. Generation fuel, it says, is not bought at retail prices and carries fewer levies; the units are dispatched to meet system requirements across the morning, midday and evening peaks rather than run continuously; and not all of them operate on a given day.

Installed capacity across the fleet is 444.67MW, of which thermal plant supplies 53.22MW and hydropower 390.15MW. On this reading, the diesel units are about twelve per cent of capacity, which puts them in the reserve margin for a few hours a day rather than in the energy balance, and that is where grid reliability is settled for a buyer running a continuous process.

For anyone holding a power purchase agreement or pricing supply in Malawi, December is the checkable part of this statement. The implication is that until those units return, peak cover sits with the hydropower stations alone, and load shedding risk stays banked in the peak hours.