Pretoria – 21st August, 2015 – ZAMBIA’S High Commissioner to South Africa Designate, His Excellency Mr. Emmanuel Mwamba has invited a South African based company to provide urgent solutions which will help Zambia address the current power shortages.
Mr. Mwamba has urged Energyst – Energy Rental Solutions to make arrangements so that they could travel to Zambia and meet relevant officials for guidance on how they could assist Zambia in resolving the current critical power shortage.
He said the country was facing the most critical energy crisis in 50 years following last year’s poor rainfall. Zambia’s hydro-power generation system is entirely rain-fed.
Mr. Mwamba was speaking when he met Energyst, Commercial Manager, Ms. Marissa Spencer at his office in Pretoria this afternoon.
He said the High Commission could not make decisions on the issue but will facilitate so that representatives from Energyst – Energy Rental Solutions could travel to Zambia and meet relevant officials.
The High Commissioner said Zambia was currently spending huge amounts of money on importing power and that this was still not enough to meet Zambia’s requirements.
“Please urgently do a proposal to my office and we will immediately start making arrangements to meet your needs from our end. We have a serious challenge with power and we are welcoming suggestions which could help address this.”
“I feel solutions such as yours could just help us find a quick and effective solution to end our woes because they are not like what you would get through solar, or thermal or even the battery system as these take much longer to come on-stream and cost more,” Mr. Mwamba said.
And Ms. Spencer said Energyst, whose shareholders are world renowned Caterpillar and Barloworld, installs and operates power plants on rental basis across the world.
Ms. Spencer said her company recently completed a 12 megawatts plant in Burundi while others have been installed in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroun. The power plants can either be diesel or gas run and can even be built to magnitudes that would run a high energy consuming factory or light up an entire city.
She said her company would be ready to travel to Zambia within the next two weeks to do a feasibility study and soon after begin installation works. She said Energyst was able to install facilities from 10 megawatts to hundreds of megawatts and that such projects would take about three to five weeks.
Ms. Spencer said Energyst also trains staff and transfers the equipment to clients in an event that the agreement was meant for purchase.
Issued by:
Nicky Shabolyo
PRESS SECRETARY
HIGH COMMISSION OF ZAMBIA IN SOUTH AFRICA
Mobile: 00 27 810027548 Email:press@zambiapretoria.net; nshabolyo@gmail.com