By Dhiladhila Magazine · Issue 04
Namibia buys more than half its power from abroad. A 20 MW plant near Omaruru is the first domestic answer NamPower fully owns.
On 29 March 2022, on arid ground about 15 kilometres southeast of Omaruru, NamPower completed the Omburu solar plant and began feeding its power into the national grid. At 20 megawatts it is modest by regional standards, yet it is the first grid-connected solar station the utility fully owns and operates, which makes its economics matter more than its size.
The number the plant argues against is an uncomfortable one. Namibia imports roughly half to sixty per cent of the electricity it uses, much of it from South Africa’s Eskom through the Southern African Power Pool, and local generation covered only about a quarter of demand in 2021. Every domestic megawatt changes that ratio a little.
A grid that leans on its neighbours
Namibia’s supply problem is structural, not seasonal. Peak demand runs above 600 megawatts, and the utility has long been unable to generate more than half of it at home, so the balance is bought across the border on terms set elsewhere. That dependence exposes the economy to other countries’ shortages, their price rises and their currency movements.
Domestic generation is also narrowly based. Ruacana’s 330 megawatt hydro scheme carries most of it, but the plant has no reservoir of its own and runs only when the Kunene flows, and most of that river’s catchment sits in Angola. A dry season upstream becomes a supply risk at home.
Imported power is convenient until the day the seller has none to spare.
What one solar plant actually shifts
Omburu will not end that dependence; 20 megawatts against a 600 megawatt peak is a small share. Its significance is directional. The plant is expected to generate about 67.8 gigawatt-hours a year, enough to supply in the order of 18,500 households, and every unit it produces is a unit NamPower does not have to import or burn diesel to cover.
Solar also lands at the right time of day. Namibian demand and Namibian sunshine broadly coincide, so daytime solar output displaces some of the most expensive imported and thermal power on the system, easing the load precisely when the grid is tightest.
The plant is a small number with a useful shape: home-made power in the daylight peak.
Import substitution, measured in megawatts
Read as industrial policy, Omburu is import substitution applied to electricity. Instead of exporting cash to buy power, the country builds the capacity to make some of it, keeping both the spending and the asset onshore. That is the same logic a manufacturer uses when it decides to make a component rather than buy it in.
The macro case rests on repetition rather than this one plant. A single 20 megawatt station is a demonstration; a programme of them, backed by the stated goal of sourcing 70 per cent of the country’s energy from renewables by 2030, is what would move the import ratio in a way the national accounts would notice.
One plant proves the model; a pipeline of them is what changes the balance of payments.
The economic read
For a policymaker, Omburu’s value is that it is wholly domestic – owned, operated and now generating without a foreign partner taking a share of the output. It sets a template the utility can copy on ground it already controls, at a cost it has shown it can meet. The constraint is scale and speed, not proof of concept.
The risk is complacency. A single visible solar plant can create a sense of progress that outruns the megawatts actually added, and the import bill will keep rising until domestic build outpaces demand growth. The plant is a start the country has to multiply, not a milestone it can rest on.
Omburu shows the country can build its own power; the test is how fast it builds the next.
For an energy planner or an investor weighing Namibian generation, Omburu is the clearest 2022 sign that the utility can build and own domestic renewable capacity rather than only buy power abroad. The decision it sharpens is one of pace: whether to treat this 20 megawatt plant as the first of many built quickly enough to bend the import curve, or as a stand-alone gesture the country admires while the purchases from Eskom keep climbing.
Sources: NamPower 2022 Annual Report; Omburu Solar Power Station (Wikipedia); Namibia imports over 50% of electricity from neighbours (Trends n Africa)
