Oshili PowerThe wire is the part of this site that reads official notices so that a power user does not have to: ministries, utilities, regulators and lenders across the region, in four languages, reduced to what changed and for whom. Fifteen briefs went up in the past week. Read together, they are a week in the life of a grid that is being built faster than it is being described.
New supply
- A mine-backed solar park reaches commercial operation, and its tariff has already cleared the regulator. The first phase of Kamoa-Kakula's 430 MW park in Lualaba, DRC, financed with USD 522 million of private money, structured between the mine and two energy investors. The regional template for a mine that builds its own supply.
- Malawi's state generator brings the first 10 megawatts of Salima solar into operation.
- Burundi switches on 17 megawatts at Mulembwe, and the question moves to connection.
- A signed grant puts committed money behind Kapichira's turbines. Malawi, with the African Development Bank.
New lines
- Uganda's first privately financed transmission project reaches construction start. The first independent transmission project on the continent to break ground.
- Angola begins building a 220 kV ring between Benguela and Huambo.
- Kenya's coast gateway substation moves to 400kV, and coastal diesel running falls to 35MW. Power to the coast now arrives mostly down a high voltage corridor from upcountry.
- A second 400kV route into Kenya's lower east is now carrying power.
- Kenya commissions the Isinya to Namanga line, and most of it was already carrying power.
- A commissioned 132kV line shortens the distribution path into Migori.
- Burundi's 30 kV reinforcement has a contractor, and generators a clearer picture.
- The transmission company signs substation construction contracts, and waiting generators gain a builder. South Africa; a project can be financed, built and ready, and still earn nothing if the bay it connects into has not been built.
New access
- Olkaria's industrial park becomes a customs zone, and its tax reliefs switch on. Kenya's geothermal field with an industrial park on top of it.
- Mabil II takes grid supply, and Mozambique's household access rate sits at 55.6 per cent.
- Mungari joins the Mozambican grid, and Manica's connected-post count moves to five.
For large power users
Three patterns across fifteen notices.
The mine is becoming its own utility. Kamoa-Kakula's 430 MW is the largest, but Salima, Mulembwe and the Burundi reinforcement are the same story at smaller scale: supply is being built where the load is, with the grid as the second source rather than the first.
The line is the constraint, not the plant. Nine of the fifteen are about wires, substations and contractors, not generators. Kenya commissioned four in a week. In South Africa the substation contracts matter more to a waiting generator than any announcement about new capacity.
Private money is moving into transmission. Uganda's independent transmission project is the first; the structures that make it bankable are the ones a large user's wheeling path will depend on next.
Every brief cites its primary notice. The wire runs daily; this digest will run weekly.
Sources
- Oshili Power wire briefs, each linked below, each citing its primary source