The ten-year old electricity purchase agreement between NamPower and Eskom in South Africa will end in May this year and must be renegotiated. According to well-placed sources, the price of 8 cents per kilowatt-hour has been in place since 1996. But the accelerate economic growth in South Africa and its neighbours increased electricity demands from Eskom, which exports mainly to Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe, will outstrip the capacity of Eskom by 2007. Worsening the situation is the breakdown of one 900MW unit of the Koeberg nuclear plant north of Cape Town since September 2005. This lead to power outages in the Cape and lesser imports to Namibia. NamPower is running the Van Eck coal-fired power plant for the past 4 months, which is more expensive than the cheap electricity form RSA. "We cannot do that for very much longer", NamPower MD Leake Hangala told reporters this week. Namibian consumers are likely to experience a steep increase in electricity prices in the second half of 2006 well-placed sources told PLUS.