In a statement, Zesa’s stakeholder relations said customers
will not experience, during the festive period, the aggressive load curtailment
they have been experiencing in the past few weeks after output at Kariba South
was cut sharply to run-of-river after stored flood waters were exhausted,
faults at Hwange Thermal meant only two units of the six units were running,
and a general shortage of regional capacity made imports difficult.
“This development follows weeks of depressed generation
attributed to the dropping water levels at Lake Kariba which necessitated the
directive to reduce power generation at Kariba South Power Station by the
Zambezi River Authority,” said Zesa.
“Moreover, the incessant breakdown of the aged Hwange Power
Station equipment saw the station operating with two units during the period.
The current power generation challenges affecting the region affected
electricity trading on the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) market, further
reducing import arrangements in the face of exponential demand for power in the
country.
“Our engineers and technicians have been working
frantically to ensure increased power generation. Consequently, we have increased
generation at the Hwange Power Station by getting the broken down units back
up, resulting in 5 of the 6 being currently operational which has increased
supply to the national grid.”
Along with the rise in local generation and the increased
imports from Mozambique, following the Government making the required foreign
currency available, there is an expected cut in demand with a swathe of
business on its annual maintenance shut-down and reduced demand in other
sectors.
“In the past weeks, we have been extensively engaging with
various stakeholders so as to implement critical measures to alleviate the
power deficit challenges,” said Zesa, noting that the deficit was common to
most SADC countries. But there was extra capacity in Mozambique which Zesa has
managed to tap.
“We have successfully managed to secure the injection of
additional imports from other SAPP members to support supply until the Kariba
reservoir recovers in the first quarter of next year.
“We would like to express our profound gratitude for the
support and commitment we got from the Government to mobilise the much needed
foreign currency.”
Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli
Ncube told Parliament last week he had made US$34 million available to boost
and pay for needed imports.
Zesa has also been working with its largest customers,
those who pay for their maximum power demand rather than buy units of energy as
domestic and other businesses do. This allows these customers, mainly the
largest mines and some of the largest industries, to import directly.
So Zesa worked with them to intensely facilitate the
establishment of an Intensive Energy User Group (IEUG) with to guarantee
supplies to maximum demand customers and ease pressure on the grid, said the
statement.
Besides importing directly, Zesa said these customers could
support the development of independent power producers in Zimbabwe by signing
supply agreements directly with them. For both the direct imports by very large
users and those buying directly from the independents, Zesa just provides the
grid to bring the power from the supplier to teh customer.
The first meeting of this IEUG of major users was held on
March 29 this year and there have been engagement meetings in Zambia and
Mozambique since then.
“We are now pushing that we move faster on this initiative
as it is in line with global developments where the private sector is involved
more and more in developing and securing power supplies.
“As a sign of progression and commitment, during the
current crisis some of the members of this group offered to resource the
utility with advance payments of their electricity usage bills to enable us to
meet our power import obligations, and to date one such transaction has already
been implemented.”
The next main step is to bring the pair of new generating
units at Hwange Extension on line, with their extra 600MW. Tests at Hwange 7
should soon be complete, to be followed soon after by Hwange 8, and senior Zesa
staff have joined other technical staff and the resident power station staff
and are staying at Hwange over the festive season to keep the commissioning
momentum going.
“The two units were originally expected to supply the grid
from early this year. But the delays caused by Covid-19 derailed the
completion. But “commissioning preparations are well on course”, Zesa said.
Herald
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