The Ethiopian Electric Utility has responded to problems the Metal and Engineering Corporation has encountered assembling power factor correction capacitors by asking them to fulfill their obligation. Six years ago METEC agreed to produce 4,975 capacitors, which help ensure the correct amount of power being used, within six months, but so far only half were produced. They were expected to be placed at 781 manufacturing companies so they could reduce energy costs. Initially all the capacitors, which are assembled here, were going to be automatic but only 210 were while 1660 were manual. EEU officials told Capital that they expect the problem to be solved shortly. “We acknowledge we made a mistake because our customers had to wait for six years to get the capacitors, METEC told us that the foreign currency shortage caused a significant delay in importing materials, we wanted to do the job quickly,” an official told Capital, adding that they instructed MTEC to assemble automatic capacitors. YergaTsegayewho is General manager of Yoke PlastTradebased in Mekele told Capital,“We paid 200,000 birr for the corporation to install the correction capacitors in the company, some years ago they came and put the equipment in the company but they have not connected the capacitors to the transmission lines, and because of this I pay up to 40,000 birr per month for the reactive power penalty to EEU, which means I am throwing money away,” he said. Other companies in Adama and Addis Ababa also raised similar issues. Currently from 50 to 1000 k/w bar capacitor banks are assembled by METEC which costs up to a million birr.
[capitalethiopia.com]