A handful of revellers, disregarding global and national
recommendations to stay at home and reduce the possibility of contracting or
spreading the deadly coronavirus, mingle in a pub at Hauna growth point in
Honde Valley.
It’s midweek and by 8pm the well-lit centre is still
bustling with activity as an assortment of vendors outside compete for the
defiant customers going about their routine nightlife.
Unlike most parts of the country, where people have already
been forced to reduce business hours particularly at night owing to power
outages, here they close when they want because electricity is available around
the clock.
Closing his grocery store for the day, Kudzai Nyabereka
boasted that unlimited access to power had kept his businesses afloat to the
mutual benefit of the community.
“From a business
point of view, it is helping us plan our businesses well and we do not lose our
perishable products like meat and that has been our greatest benefit,” Nyabereka
said.
“I run a bakery, for example, and if power goes off during
the process of making such fresh products we will make huge losses, but I can
safely say in the recent past we have not thrown away anything on account of
not having power.”
The Honde Valley community owes its privileged status in a
country where the majority have had to endure 18-hour daily power cuts since
May last year to Nyangani Renewable Energy (NRE), an independent power producer
(IPP).
NRE has since 2010 set up mini-hydro power stations capable
of producing over 30 megawatts (MW) of electricity in the area.
IPPs are privately sponsored power projects that are
developed, constructed and operated, and have long-term power purchase
agreements (PPAs) with the national power utility.
Through a run-off river power system, a type of
hydroelectric generation plant whereby little or no water storage is provided,
NRE has managed to fill a significant part of the country’s dire energy
deficit.
“Most people are just happy that power is always on in this
part of the country, but they do not know that the main reason for that is
NRE,” the company’s power generation manager, Takudzwa Chigwande, said.
According to Chigwande, Honde Valley has become a “green
area” where “there is no load-shedding” as they are producing surplus
electricity beyond the 3MW needed to power the area.
The Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) has been
failing to meet the country’s daily demand of 2 200MW resulting in long hours
of load-shedding.
Zesa’s generation capacity fell to below 820MW, against
daily peak production of 1 600MW in winter and 1 400MW in summer after water
levels at Kariba Dam dropped significantly due to successive droughts.
The situation has been made worse by coal-fired thermal
power plants that are mostly erratic due to obsolete equipment and experts say
clean energy sources like hydro, solar and wind power could be the sustainable
solutions to bridge the gap.
Chigwande said NRE was making a difference in Zimbabwe’s
electricity supply situation.
“We use a synchronised generator system where our stations
run on parallel mode to the grid feeding into it between 29 to 30 megawatts and
three megawatts of that is used in Hauna and the surplus goes to other areas,”
he said,
In addition to producing clean and environmentally friendly
energy, NRE has brought viable development to the once backward peasant
communities.
For headman Francis Kashiri in ward 5 under Chief Mutasa,
the benefits from NRE’s operations have been far beyond being able to switch on
the lights at night.
According to Kashiri, the harnessing of Pungwe River to
produce electricity by NRE through Pungwe A and B stations (the largest so far)
has resulted in infrastructural development and opened employment opportunities
for hundreds of his people.
“They have given us projects that are benefiting the
community, including jobs, building of modern houses as well as bringing pipes
to water our banana projects, which are flourishing and supplying the cities,”
he said.
In addition to compensation for their farmlands and
powering local clinics, in 2012 NRE built Nyamusamba Primary School close to
Kashiri’s homestead.
“Before this project, our children used to travel a
distance of 10km to Buwu Primary School, but now they do not have to and there
is now electricity and water here as well,” said the school’s headmaster Kiven
Ushamba, adding that connection to power makes modern teaching easier.
“There is a subject in the updated curriculum called ICT
(information and communication technology), which needs electricity and we will
be using computers that need power, so it will help us.”
United Nations research points at 13% of the global
population still lacking access to electricity while three billion people are
said to rely on unsustainable sources like wood, coal, charcoal or animal waste
for cooking and heating.
Over the years, the government has been licensing IPPs to
plug the electricity deficit, but few can match the progress being made by
producers such as NRE.
As of August 30 last year, more than 40 IPPs had been
issued power generation licences although only nine of those had their projects
completed by then.
Gazing at the scenic mountainous terrain punctuated by tidy
tributaries and teeming banana plantations, Chigwande sees opportunity to
extract more power.
“There are many sites to do a hydro (power station) because
the perennial rivers are there and in some areas the sites are determined by
the gradient so there are some sites that you can see,” he said.
Apart from financial constraints which have stalled NRE
expansion at Tsanga power station in Nyanga, he reiterated the potential to
harness more hydro power in Honde.
“There are some rivers that have not been exploited like in
Nyanga we are doing a cascaded power station, but one has stopped at 40%
because of the economic hardships,” Chigwande said.
But for Nyabereka, other traders and people of Honde Valley,
the harnessing of hydro power that has ensured continued access is nothing
short of a blessing.
“It is generally a blessing from God that we have a lot of
water and the people that thought of harnessing that power potential,”
Nyabereka said. Standard
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