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Zesco invites bids by 5 February 2021 for the engineering, design, manufacture, supply, construction, testing and commissioning of power transmission and distribution equipment under the Sustainable Electricity Supply Southern Division Project.
Zesco is in talks to lower power purchase prices from its private suppliers while it awaits completion of a delayed cost of service study. The utility’s debt to Zambia’s four IPPs currently stands at just under $800m, and Maamba Collieries Ltd (MCL) has gone to the High Court in London to enforce payment on $350m it is owed.
The Zambian government’s refusal to make a $42.5m interest payment by its 13 November deadline – thereby triggering a sovereign debt default – was hardly a surprise. The investor appetite that persuaded lenders to pile into $3bn-worth of Eurobonds has waned on President Edgar Lungu’s watch, while Covid-19 and falling commodity prices have affected sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts the region’s economy will contract by 3% in 2020 and its forecast 3.1% growth in 2021 will be “a smaller expansion than expected in much of the rest of the world”.
Investors, contractors and financiers have been reassessing southern Africa’s potential to emerge as a natural gas producer, supply hub and importer of molecules and electrons for gas-to-power (GTP) schemes. Mozambique’s emergence as an LNG exporter gives it potential to develop new gas-based industry and infrastructure. Developments in southern Mozambique further suggest it could drive a wider regional industry, with more gas exported by pipeline.
Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation (Zesco) invites prequalification bids from consultants by 4 December to serve as owner's engineer for the rehabilitation and extension of the 6MW Chishimba Falls hydropower station on the Luombe River in Northern Province.
Maamba Collieries Limited (MCL) has launched arbitration proceedings against Zambian state power utility Zesco in London’s High Court seeking payment of $350m of arrears. MCL, majority-owned by India’s Nava Bharat Ventures, says it may be forced to shut its 300MW coal-fired power plant as mounting debt and pressure from lenders pose a serious threat to the viability of its operations.
Intermediary offtaker Africa GreenCo Group has reached its first financial close following investments by InfraCo Africa, part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG), and the Investment Fund for Developing Countries (IFU). The milestone allowed GreenCo to submit a formal licence application to trade energy to Zambia’s Energy Regulation Board at the end of October. It also allows the company to kickstart preparations for operations in Zambia through GreenCo Power Services.
The World Bank has announced debarments of India’s Kalpataru Power Transmission Ltd and its regional subsidiaries and of China Electric Design and Research Institute (CEDRI). The bank said Kalpataru was sanctioned as a result of fraudulent practices when participating in the Southern African Power Market Project (SAPMP) in Democratic Republic of Congo, which rehabilitated and extended high-voltage power lines, and the Egypt Wind Power Development Project (EWPDP), which included developing transmission infrastructure.
A long-awaited power sector cost of service study being carried out by UK-based Energy Market and Regulatory Consultants (EMRC) will not now be completed until 2021. Energy permanent secretary Trevor Kaunda said the government was hopeful the study, which had been promised for year-end, would be completed next year and would help settle several disputes within the sector.
US-based renewables developer Ultra Green Corporation says it is negotiating a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Zesco for a 200MW solar power plant in Central Province. Ultra Green Zambia manager Emmanuel Mwizerwa said the company plans to start construction of the $216m project once Zesco approves the PPA.
The Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy (Masen) is tendering for a technical adviser to help deliver the first of a series of power projects which it intends to build in Zambia in partnership with the national utility Zesco.
A request for proposals is scheduled to be issued in Q3 to prequalified engineering, procurement and construction contractors to build the 180MW Ngonye Falls hydropower plant on the Zambezi River. Prequalification for the project got under way last year. The tender comes despite uncertainty about the direction of the power sector in the country, with national utility Zesco taking on ever more debt and the government picking a fight with the Copperbelt Energy Corporation, Zesco’s most reliable source of income.
A first attempt by Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC) at overturning the statutory instrument issued by energy minister Matthew Nkhuwa on 29 May declaring CEC’s network common carrier, as well as the imposition of a tariff a couple of days later, failed when the High Court denied leave to initiate proceedings on 15 June. CEC will now take the case to the Court of Appeal.
Energy minister Matthew Nkhuwa on 1 June declared transmission and distribution assets owned by the publicly listed Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC) as common carrier. This is intended to allow Zesco to use CEC lines to supply power to the government-controlled Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), with which it has signed a term sheet for power supply. The regulator imposed a hastily approved wheeling fee, which CEC says is equivalent to only 30% of its current network tariff.
