Tanzania Electric Supply Limited (Tanesco) has begun construction of power plants in Dar es Salaam and Mwanza as part of the government’s emergency plan to cope with frequent outages especially in Dar es Salaam and to increase electricity generation by at least 650 MW within the next two to three years.
The plant at the Ubungo district of Dar es Salaam will have a capacity of 100MW and is being built by Norwegian power-plant firm Jacobsen Elektro AS. The plant in Nyakato, Mwanza will produce 60MW but its construction company has yet to be identified. The combined 160MW will go towards filling the 264MW gap in the national grid, as highlighted by the country’s ministry for energy and minerals in February.
Scheduled to be completed by late May-early June 2012, both projects have been part-financed by the Tanzanian government but the majority of the construction costs will be paid for with a loan from HSBC Bank of Norway.
The generators used in the Dar es Salaam plant will produce electricity using natural gas, and the plant in Mwanza will run on oil.
Tanesco confirmed that the generators were manufactured in Sweden by Siemens and would be shipped to Tanzania by the end of June.
A recent report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stated that output economic growth in Tanzania, east Africa’s second-largest economy, is likely to slow to 6 per cent in 2011 from 7 per cent in 2010, as a result of power shortages.
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