Communication - Presse
Drought affects electricity production at Cahora Bassa dam
The Cahora Bassa Hydroelectric Plant (HCB), in the centre of Mozambique, announced on Thursday that ‘management measures’ are underway to deal with the effects of ‘the continuing severe drought, influenced by the occurrence of the El Niño phenomenon’ in southern Africa.
The company, one of the largest electricity producers in the region, said in a statement sent to Lusa that these measures have been in place since July and are intended to ensure ‘that the production planned for this year will potentially be achieved, offset by exceeding the targets for the first half of the year’.
‘The measures, implemented on a scientific basis and according to the technical data available, are aimed at safeguarding the hydraulic-operational safety of the dam and related infrastructure, as well as the fulfilment of the commercial commitments made and ensuring that water will be available for production in the coming years,’ says the company.
Since the Mozambican state’s reversion to Mozambique, agreed with Portugal in 2007, 90% of HCB’s share capital has been held by the Mozambican state, while the Portuguese company Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN) has a share of 7.5% and Eletricidade de Moçambique 2.5%.
HCB says that in these measures, it is keeping in mind ‘the sustainability of the project, balancing the need to preserve water storage with hydroelectric generation’ and that it is ‘collecting and systematising all the relevant information, both hydro-climatological information on the Zambezi basin and information on the management of upstream dams’, recognising that the southern African region in general ‘continues to experience one of the worst droughts in the last thirty years’.
The Cahora Bassa reservoir is the fourth largest in Africa. It has a maximum length of 270 kilometres and 30 kilometres between banks, occupies 2,700 square kilometres, and has an average depth of 26 metres.
The company points out that at the end of the first half of September, the level of the HCB reservoir was 312.87 metres, corresponding to 44.1% of its useful capacity. This is a more comfortable situation compared to the upstream dams, which have much lower storage levels and are implementing one of the most severe restriction regimes in energy production, a fact that negatively affects the release of water downstream.
Based on official seasonal climate forecasts of ‘high probabilities of normal rainfall with an above-normal trend over the Zambezi Basin during the 2024/25 rainy season, favoured by the La Niña phenomenon’, it predicts ‘great possibilities for a reasonable recovery of Cahora Bassa’s storage during 2025, which could gradually make it possible to achieve satisfactory hydro-energy production in subsequent years’.
‘Because HCB’s energy production is critical and indispensable for the energy stability of the country and the region, the company will continue to take all the necessary measures and monitor the long-term meteorological forecasts, the evolution of the hydro-climatological situation in the Zambezi Basin and the updates of the operating plans for the upstream dams, so that it can make the operational adjustments that are indispensable for Cahora Bassa in good time,’ it concludes.
According to the company, Lusa reported on 15 August that HCB’s profits increased by 56% up to June to 8.96 billion meticais (€127.3 million), which had already warned of low storage levels.
In the report with the financial statements for the first six months of 2024, the company announced that electricity sales, in quantity, were 6.2% higher than in the same period in 2023 and 3.5% higher than planned for the six months.
‘Given current production and sales levels, annual sales are expected to reach 14,257.93 GWh, 1.4 % and 1.1 % lower than in 2023 and than planned for this year, respectively,’ according to the report released in August.
As a result of the financial performance of the first half of the year, ‘it is estimated that net profits by the end of the year will be at the budgeted level, i.e. 13.85 billion meticais(€196.8 million),’ the report said.
In terms of water availability, the dam had a level of 316.98 metres on 30 June, corresponding to 59.17% of the reservoir’s useful storage.
