water shortage main cause of less power production

Pangani. Shortage of water has been cited as the main factor affecting power production in hydropower plants along the Pangani Hydro Systems.

His was said by Plant Manager in Pangani Hydropower Systems, Eng Mahenda Stephen Mahenda when talking to journalists on December 18 at hale hydropower station.

“Yes we have some technical issues with our machines but they are all in condition to produce its full installed capacity but we ca not run them effectively because there is no enough water,” he said.

Pangani Hydro Systems involves three power generating plants at Nyumba ya Mungu Dam in Kilimanjaro region, Hale and News Pangani falls in Tanga Region and Eng Mhenda is in charge of all three stations.

He noted that though some of the machines, especially at ale, were installed during early independence years, but they can still produce according to their specification.

“But there is New Pangani Fall which is fairly new but we do not operate it at its full capacity all the time because we don’t have enough water to do so,” he clarified.

New Pangani, which was commissioned in 1994 has installed capacity of 68MW, Hale, which started operations in 1964 can produce 8MW and Nyumba ya Mungu has the capacity to generate 8MW.

He said in addition to shortfall in amount of rains, but environmental destruction along the river was a serious problem.

Elaborating, Eng Mahenda said that human activities along the river banks has affected its depth and sometimes clogging it altogether.

“Unfortunately, Tanesco, though we spend a lot of money to ensure that the river is good condition always, we are not given priority when it comes to usage of the river water,” he said.

He noted that because of human activities, mainly agriculture, often the rover clogs, resulting to floods in some parts as water try to find alternative route.

“But this also means that we get less water in our hydropower stations for generating electricity,” he noted.