TANESCO to produce electricity from gas reserves
By Moses John,
Dar es Salaam
The power utility giant TANESCO have plans in the pipeline to exploit vast reserves of natural gas in Mtwara region to produce electricity, The Express is informed.
Tanesco Communication Manager Badra Masoud told The Express that plans are underway to tap gas from wells located in Mnazi Bay and Msimbati in Mtwara region, which contains proven reserves of 760 billion cubic feet.
The Tanzanian government plans to construct a pipe line from Mtwara via Somanga to Dar es Salaam, where a 300 MW gas-fired power plant will be situated, and connect the power generated from the plant to the National Grid.
Ms Masoud said the proposed project is expected to be completed by 2017.
The Songo Songo gas well in Kilwa district has been in production since 2004 and the 260km pipe line was constructed from Kilwa to Dar es Salaam, where a 200MW gas-fired power plant was built. The plant is run by Songas.
The Tanzanian government and the PANAFRICA company are working on the gas well expansions to obtain more gas resources for power generation which shall increases and industrial use.
Regarding Mkuranga well in Mkuranga district, Coast region, a French exploration company has confirmed that there is are good signs of gas resources at Mkuranga for electricity generation and agricultural fertilizers.
The Power System Master Plan (2008) proposes a hydro/thermal mix power generation of 50 percent by 50 percent by 2020.
TANESCO generation division is responsible for all power generation functions, where other sources of generation are from independent power producers (IPPs) which feed the National grid and isolated areas as well.
According to TANESCO the generation system consists mainly of Hydro and Thermal based generation. Hydro contributes the largest share of TANESCO’s power generation. The total generation from TANESCO own sources in 2008 was 2,985,275,264 kWh out of which 2,648,911,352 kWh, 90 percent was from Hydro Power Plants.
Total country demand was 4,425,403,157 kWh, of which 33 percent was supplied by IPPs. The hydro-plants operated by TANESCO are all interconnected with the national grid system and their installed capacity for each station is as follows: Kidatu 204 MW, Kihansi 180 MW, Mtera 80 MW, Pangani 68 MW, Hale 21 MW, and Nyumba ya Mungu 8 MW totaling to 561 MW.
TANESCO has been implementing power generation mix program, whereby a substantial amount of generation comes from thermal generation through own generation and independent power plants (IPPs). Own thermal generation comes from the Ubungo 100 MW gas-fired plant in Dar es Salaam.Another 45MW gas-fired power plant located at Tegeta in Dar es Salaam. By the end of year 2008 IPPs contributed a total installed capacity of 282 MW. IPPs powering the national grid include the Independent Power Tanzania Ltd (IPTL) with 100 MW (diesel based) installed capacity and SONGAS (Songo Songo gas – to electricity project) which by the end of 2007 had 182 MW capacity.
TANESCO also imports a total of 10 MW of electric power for Kagera Region from Masaka substation in Uganda while Sumbawanga, Tunduma and Mbozi districts receive about 3 MW from neighbouring Zambia.
There are also several diesel generating stations connected to the national grid in Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, Tabora, Dodoma, Musoma and Mbeya. These have installed capacity of 80 MW but the only operational grid diesel based station is Dodoma which contributes about 5 MW and the rest are due for disposal due to obsolescence and high maintenance costs.However a short term plan is being implemented to replace the retired capacity by a 60MW plant at Nyakato, Mwanza by 2011. The other regions, districts and townships namely, Kigoma, Mafia, Mpanda, Tunduru, Songea, Liwale, Ikwiriri, Masasi, Mbinga, Ludewa, Ngara, Bihalamulo, and Kilwa Masoko are dependent on isolated diesel–based generators with a total installed capacity of 31 MW.
Mtwara and Lindi are supplied by M/S Artumas Group Ltd, an IPP based in Mtwara. The total capacity of Artumas power plant is 8MW using gas from Mnazi Bay gas wells in Mtwara.
By The Express Reporter
TANZANIA is in dilemma on whether to sell its ivory stockpile as pressure mounts from Kenya and other African countries pushing for a total ban of ivory trade and ivory products.
Disagreements continue to cloud relations between Tanzanian and Kenyan wildlife conservationists over Tanzania’s application to the forthcoming Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) convention to be permitted to sell ivory stocks, sources from the Wildlife Division told The Express.
Tanzania claim that keeping its almost 80 ton-stock of elephant tusks costs the country nearly US dollars 100,000 per annum, while a sale to the main consumer countries in the Far East, notably China, could raise as over US dollars 100 million.
African elephants are classified in CITES Appendix I, in which trade is prohibited. Tanzania and Zambia have been lobbying for the elephant to be down-listed from Appendix I to Appendix II, which covers endangered species but in which limited international trade is allowed.
Ahead of the CITES conference in Doha, Qatar in March this year, Tanzania is lobbying to get support from other African elephant conserving countries so as to sell its stockpile of tusks stored at the Ivory Room in Chang’ombe area in Dar es Salaam.
By Moses John,
Dar es Salaam
IBM Company has launched new Power7 servers built to manage intensely demanding computing environments such as smart electrical grids or real-time financial markets analysis.
Power 7 chips at the heart of the systems perform four times as fast as the previous generation Power 6 microprocessors, tending to 32 tasks simultaneously, according to IBM.
Power 7 systems incorporate technology tailored for services that rely on processing an enormous number of concurrent transactions and data while analyzing that information in real time, IBM.
In addition, the new systems enable clients to manage current applications and services at less cost with technology breakthroughs in virtualization, energy savings, and more cost-efficient use of memory,” according to IBM.
Tony Mwai Regional General Manager IBM East Africa, he said the Power7 processor is available in Kenya and just one part, though a key one, of a new family of IBM servers designed for a world where everything from toasters to 747s are computerized and online and businesses will have to deal with all that data.
“Computing is becoming a lot more pervasive and noting IBM expects there’ll be a trillion connected objects on the planet by next year. As a new emerging market, East Africa we expect financial institutions, healthcare providers, telcos and other organizations will have to handle and make sense of the resulting information tsunami and will “require a new type of performance” said Mwai.
With that, IBM unveiled four new servers built from the ground up to withstand the data demands of a world envisioned by the company’s Smarter Planet campaign, where everything is connected to everything.
The Power 780, Power 770, Power 755 are enterprise systems, while the Power 750 Express is for mid-market customers who don’t need the horsepower and capacity of the higher-end models.
All are based on the new Power7 processor, the full specs of which might fill a phonebook. The upshot, however, is that Power7 chips can run 32 simultaneous tasks thanks to an 8-core architecture and four virtual cores, or threads, per core. That’s 4-times the maximum number of cores found in Power6 systems and 8-times the number of threads.
Power7 also features Turbo-Core mode for intense database and transactional environments (think Wall Street). Turbo-Core shifts resources from non-active cores to active cores on-the-fly to increase memory, bandwidth and clock speed.
Power7’s “Intelligent Threads” technology also affords dynamic resource allocation depending on workloads, while Memory Expansion uses compression technology to virtually double the amount of physical memory available to an application.
Barclays promotes volunteer spirit
By Moses John ,
Dar es Salaam
BARCLAYS Bank Tanzania employees participated in a special day to promote volunteering action at Mama Theresa Children Home situated at Mburahati in Dar es Salaam.
Employees volunteered their time to participate in cooking, playing, teaching and mentoring children, general cleaning and renovations and socializing with the different members of the home.
The Managing Director, Kihara Maina talking about the event said “Barclays has a history of corporate social investment and a strong CSI programme is a part of the way we do business. It is aimed at delivering meaningful and sustained investment and support to the communities in which we do business. Barclays, therefore is directly committed to social responsibility and sustainable development in its communities”.
He further commented, “One of the missions of Barclays Bank in Africa is to play a leading role in bringing developmental changes in Africa, and to achieve this, the Bank must innovatively help tackle problems that surrounds the communities we operate in”
“This is why the global bank has a policy to set aside 1 percent of its profit before tax yearly for its CSR investment programmes. Today will launch our staff community activities this year and staff can utilize the various employee-led and bank supported programmes like the Shilling for Shilling programme to get involved in volunteering and have a positive impact on the local communities in which we live and work.”
Moni Msemo, The Barclays Bank Tanzania Community Relations Manager when speaking about the event said “The aim of this volunteering day today is to encourage staff to give their time, not their money. It is not about donations or fundraising.”
He said it is all about choice and colleagues getting involved in what matters and inspires them most. It is basically about giving yourself to the communities which we understand well and which give us our livelihoods.” She further noted that Barclays Bank has a long history of investing in the community and this is part of how the Group runs their business in the society globally. Barclays understand its responsibility to bring sustainable development to the societies where it operates
Mother Teresa Sisters Mburahati Dar es Salaam is a Roman Catholic religious centre and is part of the Global Roman Catholic Order which consists of over 4,500 sisters and is active in 133 countries.
Mother Teresa Sisters care for the mentally ill, sick children, abandoned children, disabled, AIDS victims, and the aged. These services are provided to people regardless of their religion or social status. The centre in Mburahati houses 33 kids (1 day to 12 years), 59 senior citizens and 33 people with disabilities.
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