Efforts to reduce load shedding considerably are bearing fruit with Zimbabwe soon to get up to 500MW of electricity from Zambia and Mozambique, while Hwange Power Station’s Unit 7 should be feeding 300MW into the grid before month end, Zesa Holdings executive chairman Dr Sydney Gata said in an exclusive interview.
Owing to low water levels at Lake Kariba and aged thermal
power stations, the small ones with equipment now 72 years old and even Hwange
more than 34 years old, Zimbabwe is battling massive electricity outages, with
some people saying they only have power between 10pm to 5am.
However, electricity outages are not peculiar to Zimbabwe
as large parts of the region, including powerhouse South Africa, contend with
load shedding stretching up to 10 hours per day in some cases.
But Dr Gata said Zimbabwe has been busy working on measures
to address the electricity challenges, and a huge difference in terms of the
load shedding schedule, would soon be noted across the country.
“As for the current load shedding, there is relief that is
coming. We ran around and apart from getting a bit more from Kariba, we will be
getting a bit more from Zambia and Mozambique,” said Dr Gata.
“From Zambia we are getting 100MW and they are looking for
another 50MW for us and there is also a member of the Intensive Energy Users
Group who is also looking for another 100MW. So we may get as much as 250MW
from Zambia.
“From Mozambique I was there recently and we agreed that
they will run around and increase from the 60MW they have been giving us, to
100MW immediately, and there is another 150MW which could be coming from Monday
next week. So Mozambique should give us 250MW maximum.”
All things being equal, Dr Gata expects to go to Mozambique
tomorrow to escalate the negotiations.
More electricity is expected to come from Hwange’s Unit 7,
which is expected to start feeding electricity into the grid before month end.
If all goes according to plan, Unit 7 should be connected to the grid a few
days before Christmas, said Dr Gata.
“The unit itself, in terms of operating, is actually ready
to generate. However, there was a delay in equipment required to connect it to
the grid,” he said.
Some panels which have to be installed at substations to
connect Unit 7 to the main grid were delivered late because factories shut down
early in China, where they come from.
Unit 7 has capacity to generate 300MW while on completion
in the first quarter of next year, Unit 8 will also add another 300MW to the
main grid.
For Unit 7, besides the parts, there was a delay in the
arrival of engineers from a Chinese firm. But the panels and engineers are now
on site and staff are “working frantically” to get Unit 7 onto the grid.
“So far we expect that it could be around the 20th of this
month. It could be later, it could be earlier, but thereabout and surely by Christmas,
Unit 7 should be in service, barring unforeseen situations,” said Dr Gata.
Zimbabwe is facing the current electricity challenges in
part due to Covid-19 which slowed down the delivery of materials for Hwange’s
Units 7 and 8.
After the Covid delays, Zesa “went out proactively to
syndicate power purchase contracts” with South Africa, Zambia and Mozambique
when they still both had surplus power at a “reasonable tariff”, said Dr Gata.
However, Zimbabwe delayed getting the electricity and it was sold other
markets.
If independent power producers (IPPs) had obtained
Government guarantees on time, they could be producing reasonable quantities of
electricity which would have reduced the burden on Hwange and Kariba. Kariba
South these days should be almost entirely used to cope with peaks in demand
and react to the normal fluctuations, rather than supply base load except in an
emergency.
Globally, IPPs have been around since the unbundling of the
British electricity industry by Margaret Thatcher in 1974. In the United
Kingdom, IPPs account for 94 percent of electricity while in Ireland, the law
stipulates that the government should own not more than 50 percent of
electricity generation.
In Zambia, IPPs contribute 22 percent of power to the
national grid while in Mozambique they account for 35 percent.
However, in Zimbabwe they account for 1,5 percent, despite
having 94 IPPs licenced for a total of 7 400MW, but almost nothing of that has
been installed, just 40MW from 10 of them.
Dr Gata said if Zimbabwe could get 1 000MW from IPPs, then
Kariba would only be used in the morning peak and in the evening while IPPs
generate from solar during the day.
Water allocated to Zimbabwe by the Zambezi River Authority
would then be stored when the solar stations were operating, ensuring there was
enough for full output as the sun was setting and the evening surge in
residential demand arose. This water conservation was especially needed in an
era of climate change that has resulted in erratic rains.
Presently, about 10 IPPs are operational and are generating
about 40MW, which Dr Gata said “will never make an impact on an economy like
Zimbabwe”.
Last year alone, Zimbabwe imported an average of
300MW at a cost of US$225 million, which could have been
avoided if IPPs were generating more.
Going forward, Dr Gata said global climate funds would be channelled to IPPs from January next year so that they ramp up production. Herald
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