Namibia’s torrential rains have proved helpful to the nation’s severe electricity shortage. The Kunene River system received more than enough rainfall to feed the Ruacana Hydro-electric Power Station’s inflow requirement of about 220 cubic meters per second, in order to turn the three hydro-generators, for production of about 240 megawatts (MW), which is fed into the Namibia Power Grid at 330,000 volts.
“Ruacana is like a cash cow for NamPower. The investment was made in the 1970s and today it is a low-cost generation station,” said NamPower Manager for Marketing and Corporation Communications, John Kaimu, during a recent media trip to the station.
The Ruacana power station constitutes 63% of the country’s generation capacity contributing 240 MW of the country’s 384 MW generation capacity. Plans to install a fourth generator is under discussion; if approved will boost the station’s generation capacity to 320 MW.
“We are still at the tendering stage but the commissioning date will be end 2010 or early 2011,” Kaimu said.