The Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) faces a dicey period in the next few weeks as autumn approaches winter, the period in which the country’s demand for electricity peaks.
At Morupule B, the country’s main power plant, generation has been a precarious affair since commissioning in 2012; a nervily stacked house of cards which recently crumbled once again resulting in the ongoing power crisis in which consumers are facing up to eight hours of blackouts each day.
Batswana gaped in shock at the billions of Pula that this week were revealed to have been spent building, operating and maintaining Morupule B. Jaws hit the floor at the billions more spent over the years on increasingly costly imports as the power station misfired.
Executives at BPC and their principals at the Ministry of Minerals and Energy were instead more focussed on threading a pattern through the current instability and back to generation, preferably before the onset of winter in coming weeks.
The BPC’s plans to emerge from the current crisis involve juggling the hot potatoes of generation at Morupule B’s four units:
“BPC is in the process of recovering Unit 2 and Unit 4 at Morupule B power station,” a statement from the Ministry released on Tuesday read. “Unit 4 is expected to be back in service by end of today (1st of April 2025) while Unit 2 is scheduled to back in service on 17th April 2025. “The supply situation is expected to gradually improve with recovery of Morupule B units and barring the unforeseen, it is expected that the supply constrains will ease by mid-June 2025.”
On Wednesday, the BPC indeed announced that Unit 4 was back in business, with the timeline to mid-June still on track.
“Unit 4 has been successfully restored to service. “At present, BPC’s generation capacity from Morupule Power stations has increased to 235MW, Morupule A at 55MW and Morupule B at 180MW. “In addition, the two diesel-based emergency power facilities provide a total of 13-MW for dispatch under grid constraints to maintain system stability. “While this recovery of the units gradually improves power supply, a demand shortfall will continue to obtain, with the national electricity demand currently at 640MW during peak hours and 440MW during off-peak hours,” the Corporation said.
During winter, demand could cross the 700MW mark as consumers’ requirements for heating and lighting increase, while the peak periods in the morning and evening will be slightly longer.
While the latest update from the BPC would ordinarily be of some assurance to consumers, Batswana are intimately aware of Morupule B’s history of hiccups, some so dreadful in past years that the road to mid-June appears littered with obstacles.
On Monday, Minerals and Energy minister, Bogolo Kenewendo, gave legislators and the public a painfully detailed narration of the troubles Morupule B has undergone since its commissioning in 2012, indicating the cycles of hope and despair consumers have endured over the years.
“The performance of Morupule B has been erratic since commissioning in 2012/2013 due to substandard construction with significant noncompliance to specifications, poor workmanship and equipment/ material defects. “Given the construction and equipment defects, the plant experiences frequent failures notably on boiler pressure parts, thus affecting power generation from time to time and averages operational efficiency between 35 to 65 percent. “It should be noted that the global standard is 85 percent,” she said.
More worrying is the fact the remedial works that began at Morupule B in 2022, have run past the initial deadlines while units have been misfiring and breaking down even as they are repaired, tested and put back online.
Unit 4, the first to be taken down and repaired, and which returned to service this week, experienced challenges with the Fluidised Bed Heat Exchanger (FBHE), the critical component which has been at the heart of the power station’s challenges since 2012.
It would appear the Unit’s return to generation on Wednesday was a forced, last-gap measure to reduce the supply gap and that its challenges could re-appear.
“The unit still experiences failures on the replaced FBHE,” Kenewendo said on Monday ahead of the Unit’s return. “A root cause analysis is still being undertaken to determine the cause of failure.”
While Kenewendo’s explanations on Morupule B’s troubles was detailed, a previous assessment by one of the power station’s financiers was even more scrupulous. The World Bank pumped $136 million into the Morupule B project and its associated developments. Other funding came from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China/Standard Chartered initiative, the African Development Bank and the Government of Botswana.
In 2016, the World Bank essentially said Morupule B had been doomed from the start.
The contract assessment that eventually resulted in China National Electrical Engineering Company (CNEEC) winning the $971 million tender to build the power plant, was riddled with faults, starting with inexplicable changes in the type of plant required between the Prequalification document and Request for Proposals.
The Prequalification document wanted bidders for a plant using pulverised coal boilers, which the Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) had plenty of experience with at Morupule A.
However, the Request for Proposals, the last step before tender awards, asked bidders for Circulating Fluidised Bed (CFB) boiler design, which BPC and CNEEC were inexperienced with.
“This discrepancy regarding the technology of the plant, created a major risk in the selection of the contractor, as the firms prequalified for one technology, were invited to bid for another,” the World Bank noted.
To address the anomaly, the BPC allowed bidders to earn points for the experience their subcontractors had in designing boilers with CFB technology. Points were also earned for the support the subcontractor would provide in engineering, manufacturing and quality of the boilers.
“The assessment did not establish that the contractor itself had such proven experience with CFB technology,” the World Bank noted. “Given the central role of the contractor in delivering the overall, the lack of contractor’s experience with CFB technology created too high a risk for the project, the experience of the subcontractor for basic design of boilers notwithstanding.”
As a financier, the World Bank’s assessment went deep into the issues at Morupule B, noting that some of the troubles being experienced today came from inadequate supervision by the BPC of the contractor.
The World Bank’s assessment pointed out that the BPC heavily underestimated the numbers of supervisors and officials it needed to manage the project throughout design, manufacturing and delivery.
Even with its project management team and owner’s engineer, the BPC still did not put enough boots on the ground at Morupule B, where at one point 3,000 workers were involved in various activities of the fast-tracked project.
“The level of staffing was far below what the project required and the team did not have all the required competencies. The team became overwhelmed with the problems, especially after commissioning of the units and the ensuing construction-related operating problems. “BPC proved unable to strengthen the team adequately in spite of a number of attempts to do so. “Overall, BPC was not effective in its main task, which was ensuring that a new, well-operating 600MW power plant came on stream in time to replace imported electricity before end-2012 as originally envisaged,” the World Bank found.
From the government’s own findings and the World Bank’s assessments, it appears unlikely that Morupule B will be stable enough by the onset of winter. The country will have to look to other efforts being made by Kenewendo and her team, which include concluding a new firm agreement for imports from South Africa.
By Press time, the Minister was said to be in intensive meetings with her South African counterpart aimed at renegotiating a 200MW supply deal, which, with the generation at the Morupules, the costly diesel plants and intermittent solar, could potentially alleviate the hard times expected over winter.
As with “all things Morupule B” over the past decade, the coming weeks to winter will again be precarious.
