By Denis Turyahebwa.
According to the Minister of Energy and Mineral Development Eng.lrene Muloni, the 600MW Karuma and 183MW lsimba hydropower plants construction is progressing very fast with Karuma standing at 80% completion as at the end of August 2018 and lsimba at 90%.
Muloni revealed this while addressing a press briefing on Thursday. She said Karuma is expected to be complete by December 2019 and lsimba to be set by early March next year.
She said 17small renewable energy projects under the GET FIT program are expected to add 156MW to the National Grid and clarified that currently 81.7MW of renewable energy projects have been commissioned and additional 30.7MW will be completed this financial year 2018/19 and the rest are at various stages of construction.
Eng. Muloni clarified that there are projects that will be developed under the private sector which include the 50MW from Cogeneration using Bagasse, 50MW Power generation from solar PVs, 150MW Thermal power plants using Uganda’s oil resources among others.
She added that other renewable energy technologies like Biogas systems, Solar PV technology, wind energy and geothermal energy will be adopted especially for rural transformation for lighting health centres and schools, water heating and water pumping.
Meanwhile Minister Muloni said the Government in a move to reducing the tariffs of electricity for extra-large customers/manufacturers, the Government engaged the leaders of Bujagali project to refinance the debt and after refinancing with US$44M, the tariffs reduced from the average of US Cents 9.61/kWh to an average of US cents 7.91/kWh for a period 2018-2032.
However Minister Muloni lashed at people who vandalise and steal the projects raw materials saying they cause a big loss to the country and also affect all Ugandans. She said the country has so far lost Ushs 1.5bn on vandalism.
