Overview:
Nankabirwa said the addition of Karuma Hydropower Plant would enhance Uganda's power generation capacity and also strengthen and improve the stability of the power supply grid.
Uganda expects to add 600MW to its installed generation capacity with the commissioning of the Nwoya-based Karuma Hydropower Plant in March 2023, Energy Minister Ruth Nankabirwa has announced.
Announcing the 2023 electricity end user tariffs in Kampala on Friday, 30 December 2022, Nankabirwa said the addition of Karuma Hydropower Plant would enhance Uganda’s power generation capacity and also strengthen and improve the stability of the power supply grid.
“Karuma hydropower plant is among the plants with the lowest tariff as compared to the rest of the generation plants in the country. If fully dispatched, the plant will reduce the overall weighted average cost of generation, which will lead to a reduction in the end-user tariffs,” Nankabirwa told journalists during an engagement held at Uganda Media Centre.
“This effort to reduce the end-user tariff remains a key aspiration of the Country as an enabler of industrialization for social and economic transformation,” she added.
The 600 MW Karuma Hydropower Plant would see the West Nile region get connected to the Transmission Grid for the first time by March 2023.
Nankabirwa also announced that the government with support from the World Bank will also implement the Energy Access Scale-up Project (EASP) project to support over 1,360,000 households, industrial Parks, SMEs and refugees and host communities to get connected to electricity under the Electricity Connection Policy (ECP).