Malawi commissions green power

Deputy Energy and Mines Minister Gift Mwamondwe said the plant has the capacity to generate enough electricity power to light 150 houses within a 3km radius.

“The initiative would enhance development activities in the country's remote areas most of which is not connected to the national electricity grid,” he said.

Out of Malawi's population of 14 million people, only about 7.4 per cent of the population has access to electricity.

“This is not health for Malawi's economic development,” he bemoaned.

The plant has a 15kVa inverter and a 21kW system producing 100 units per day and was assembled locally.

With this kind of plant, Mwamondwe said the Malawi government intends to make huge changes in the lives of Malawians in the rural areas by providing them with cheap electricity.

“The Government saw it fit to take the project to areas that are very far from the grid of the Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi in order to accelerate development activities in rural areas,” said the corporation's CEO Peterson Zembani.

Malawi intends to replicate similar projects in other areas across the country.