EDM DISCUSSES NEW POWER LINE WITH ITS PARTNERS

The chairperson of the board of Mozambique’s electricity distribution company, EDM, Augusto Fernando, has announced that the company is working with its partners to finalise details of CENSUL – the project for a new electricity transmission line from the Zambezi Valley to Maputo. Among these partners, Fernando said, are the Portuguese electricity company REN, Eletrobras of Brazil, Eskom of South Africa and EDF of France. EDM is working with these companies on technical matters, preceding the construction of the CENSUL line, commonly referred to as “the backbone” of the Mozambican electricity grid.Fernando warned that the new line will also depend on the building of a new dam on the Zambezi at Mpanda Nkuwa, about 60 kilometres downstream from the existing dam at Cahora Bassa.A consortium headed by the Brazilian company Camargo Correia will build Mpanda Nkuwa, and work will be carried out simultaneously on the new dam and the new power line.A new transmission line is necessary, because the existing line, which carries Cahora Bassa power to South Africa, will be insufficient once more power sources come on stream – these include Mpanda Nkuwa, a second power station at Cahora Bassa, and coal fired power stations built by the mining companies Vale and Rio Tinto.The CENSUL line is budgeted at 2.5 billion US dollars, and is regarded as key to industrialization in Mozambique and in the regon. The project involves two parallel high voltage power lines running from Tete to Maputo, with five new substations (at Cataxa, Inchope, Vilanculos, Chibuto and Moamba). One will be an alternating current line operating at 400 kV, while the other will carry direct current at 500 kV.The new lines will reduce Mozambique’s dependence on South Africa for electricity. The current line south does not take Cahora Bassa power directly to Maputo. Instead the line goes to the Apollo sub-station in South Africa, and is then carried back into southern Mozambique on lines belonging to Eskom.The CENSUL project should solve inter-connection problems between the various sub-systems that form the national grid, and will encourage the development of new electricity generation projects, both thermal and hydro-electric.