Malawi awards $7.5m grid-monitoring contract to GE

1st April 2016

By: Mia Breytenbach

Creamer Media Deputy Editor: Features

  

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Industrial major GE has started a $7.5-million contract for the installation and commissioning of the energy management system (EMS) and telecommunication system at the State-owned Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom).

The Millennium Challenge Account – Malawi (MCA-Malawi) awarded the contract in October, under the country’s infrastructure development project, which aims to stabilise and modernise the existing transmission network.

MCA-Malawi will implement and manage the $350.7-million Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact.

The MCC Compact aims to reduce poverty through spurring economic growth in Malawi.

Currently, only 8% of Malawians are connected to the grid, while 98% of the electricity is produced in the southern part of the country.

With just a little more than 350 MW of generation capacity, Malawi is working towards securing power generation, improving the availability, reliability and quality of power supply.

GE will design, supply, install and commission its latest EMS e-terra platform solution, which will allow for real-time remote monitoring, planning and optimisation of Escom’s transmission system nationwide.

Key benefits of the solutions include improving the efficiency and reliability of the transmission network, while reducing technical and nontechnical power losses.

The contract also includes the installation of remote terminal units at existing and new transmission substations in the central and southern region of Malawi, as well as upgrading the existing telecommunication system. This upgrade is twofold: extending the existing telecommunications system to ensure connectivity to the new supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)/EMS platform and ensuring connectivity of the existing substations.

This will also connect the new substations being constructed as part of another MCA-Malawi project, explains GE Grid Software Solutions region leader for Europe, Africa and Central Asia Christian Olivier.

GE will further provide technical training on the solution that will contribute to Escom’s capacity building and technical knowledge.

“GE expects the SCADA/EMS development platform to be delivered in the second quarter of 2016, and the substation equipment to be installed in the first quarter of 2017,” says Olivier.

The company started the project in January, and the project duration is estimated at about 32 months.


“GE’s solution will enable Escom to provide a reliable and cost-efficient operation of its transmission system. This is in line with MCA-Malawi’s Infrastructure Development project to rehabilitate, upgrade and modernise Escom’s generation, transmission and distribution assets . . . to [ultimately] improve the livelihood of the Malawian people,” says MCA-Malawi CEO Susan Banda.

Olivier adds that monitoring the grid in real time is a key requirement to secure electricity supply nationwide.

He notes that a key challenge for the country’s power grid is to increase the capacity to move power from the south to the central and northern regions, as well as developing rural electrification. “Modernising and expanding the grid to efficiently and safely transmit electricity is a critical element of ensuring more Malawians get access to electricity.

Moreover, grid stability is a vital component to secure interconnectedness between countries, such as Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique, and limit the propagation of potential default from one country to the other, Olivier stresses.

The different divisions of GE’s energy connections business are also involved in several projects across Africa, such as GE Grid Solutions’ project in Zambia for the Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation to create a high-voltage, gas-insulated substation – the first ‘digital substation’ in Africa.

GE Grid Software Solutions’ projects include upgrading South African State-owned power utility Eskom’s EMS systems, work for a SCADA/EMS project ranging across Mali, Togo-Benin, Guinea and Djibouti, as well as a SCADA/distribution management system project in Tanzania.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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