Botswana’s electricity supply issues intensified in 2007. As a result of Botswana’s economic growth, demand for electricity began to exceed the county's output capacity. Shortages lead to forced nationwide periods of load shedding: planned supply interruptions that control the distribution of available electricity among customers.
The plant uses two 45MW GE LM6000 gas turbines supplied by GE Gas Power. These dual fuel Sprint simple cycle units are among more than 6,000 turbines in GE's fleet installed throughout the world. Orapa station serves as an emergency power facility when supply from conventional electricity generation sources is inadequate to meet demand.
Built under a partnership between Debswana Mine, Botswana Power Corporation and the Botswana Government, this power station was commissioned at a time when the country was in a critical need of electricity to power various industries, such as mining and construction, as well as household use.
It was commissioned using diesel with a planned conversion to natural gas once construction of a gas pipeline from nearby gas fields was complete. The powerful GE Gas Power dual fuel turbines can be switched from running on diesel to natural gas, a conversion capability that offers significant cost savings to BPC and Debswana Mine, thus providing more economical and cleaner power to Botswana.
In the past, up to 80 percent of Botswana's power supply was imported. With the commissioning of Orapa and other capable energy facilities, Botswana can better address inadequate generation capacity and be able to increase the country's internally generated supply.
Botswana will always need a rich electricity supply because of population growth and industries with new projects that need to be connected to the national grid. While complete energy self-sufficiency may be an ongoing goal, Orapa's 90MW turbine power plant has contributed significantly to addressing Botswana's demand and supply mismatch.
