Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (ESCOM) has encouraged industrial and commercial customers to start using energy efficient lighting tubes, saying the tubes will help customers reduce their electricity bills and assist ESCOM to minimize levels of loadshedding.
The electricity supplier on Wednesday held a sensitisation meeting in Lilongwe for commercial and industrial customers under the Energy Efficient Lighting LED Tubes Project .
Speaking during the meeting, Senior Manager for Commercial and Customer Service at ESCOM, Wiseman Kabwazi, encouraged the customers to adopt and install the lighting tubes, saying they will benefit from reduced electricity consumption.
“For us as ESCOM, we are looking at the opportunity for saving 9 Megawatts of electricity, reducing the demand and reducing the levels of loadshedding,” said Kabwazi.
He explained that one of the strategies ESCOM implements is demand side management where it implements initiatives that save electricity by reducing electricity demand thus allowing the power supplier to connect new customers without investing in new infrastructure.
He added that this is like building a virtual generation plant and currently ESCOM has a 55 Megawatt virtual power station.
“Because this is the cheapest option of meeting growing electricity demand, it also ensures that the end user tariff does not skyrocket,” said Kabwazi.
ESCOM has procured the tubes under the Advanced Energy Efficient Lighting Tubes Project and is selling them at a subsidized price of K1000 per tube.
To purchase the tubes, the commercial and industrial customers will be required to fill forms and ESCOM will be monitoring them to ensure that tubes purchased by the customers are installed and are being used. It is expected that close to 40,000 ESCOM customers will benefit from the project.
One of the participants at the meeting, Patrick Kaliwu, who works at one of the country’s hotels, said they have seen the bulbs and expect that when they start using them, the customers will reduce their electricity bills.
Currently, Malawi generates less than 400 Megawatts of electricity and ESCOM customers experience at least six hours of loadshedding per day.
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