Power outages exceed in Kinshasa. They have become more untimely and long-lasting. The national electricity company (SNEL) is facing huge power outages from Inga’s hydropower dams. The work is therefore underway, but should not be completed quickly.
as reported from Kinshasa,
The river’s waters are abundant, which should normally increase electricity production in this last quarter of the year, but if entire municipalities have been poorly served since the end of September, it is for technical reasons. Désiré Baleka, head of the electricity section at SNEL.
“There are three machines stopped at Inga, these are machines that have had their day. When you take the three groups immobilized today, it makes you over 350 MW. This is why power outages have intensified in Kinshasa. By the end of December at the latest, we will be spending the New Year parties with more power than we had three weeks ago. ”
It is therefore a third of the production that is half mast. Which is also causing unprecedented cuts in the mining area of Katanga as well as in central Congo, home to the two Inga dams.
System D
To deal with the deficit in the capital, system D applies. “We have reached an agreement with the industrialists so that they can work during the day and that we can use energy at night to supply the population,” explains Désiré Baleka.
Theoretically, SNEL only supplies Kinshasa with about 500 of the required 800 MW. In addition to the technical problems, there is theft of cables and line supports. Consumption has also risen sharply in Kinshasa due to counterfeit connections and disproportionate use, according to SNEL executives. They now intend to generalize the consumption of electricity in the prepaid state, an option encountering resistance in the field.
