Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi Ltd. (ESCOM) is the state-owned power producing company in Malawi. It is entirely in control of transmission and distribution of electric power in the country. ESCOM represents Malawi in the Southern African Power Pool. It is not to be confused with its South African equivalent Eskom.
Escom has been critised for failing to supply electricity in the country. It usually supplies people with electricity for less than 3 hours.
Nearly 95% of Malawi’s electricity supply is provided by hydropower from a cascaded group of interconnected hydroelectric power plants located on the middle part of Shire River and a mini hydro on the Wovwe River, which constitute the interconnected system. Total installed capacity of these hydropower plants is 285.82MW (thus 281.5MW for main hydro, and 4.32MW of mini-hydro Wovwe). The hydroelectric schemes on the Shire River are all of run-of the river type. Some thermal power plants serve as stand-by for the interconnected system: a 15 MW Gas Turbine Plant in Blantyre and a 1.1 MW Diesel Power Plant in Mzuzu. Likoma District has two separate isolated systems with a total installed thermal power plants capacity of 1.050MW.[1]
Power generation is however not meeting demand and rolling blackouts are scheduled routinely.
