Energy Minister Soda Zhemu said the country is likely to see power outages continue until the old equipment at the Hwange Power Station has been restored.
According to Zhemu, the new Unit 7 at Hwange Thermal Power Station is expected to come on the grid on 16 March while Unit 8 is expected to come online in April.
However, the power situation has worsened in recent days, as the country has witnessed a suppressed supply of electricity.
“The equipment is now very old; the power station was constructed a long time ago and the equipment is now due for replacement at Hwange power station. It is unfortunate because these outages are not planned. If there were planned outages, then warnings would have been sent by the power utility,” Zhemu told parliament yesterday.
“Hwange Power station lost 363MW from 440MW to 77MW. The old equipment is due for replacement. The power outage at Hwange was a forced, unplanned fault on the day and until we have dependable equipment that we need, such outages will be common,” Zhemu said.
He added that he had no clue when the three units that are down will be restored.
“Knowing how critical the situation is, the issue will be looked at as a matter of urgency.”
However, the minister said the government had put in place a national renewable energy policy in 2019 to make use of fossil, solar, wind and biogas energy.
“To date, the government has licensed 90 investments of 20 have been developed adding 68-96 megawatts to the national grid.
Zhemu also highlighted that 920MW will be restored at the station once 6 Units are restored.
“We have increased our imports from 300MW to 500MW and we also hope to increase electricity generation at Kariba with water levels at 14 % at the dam.”
National Assembly Speaker Jacob Mudenda said there was a need for Soda to bring a comprehensive ministerial statement on the power crisis.
Soda also said the water level at Kariba Dam was rising and was now at 14 per cent of live storage. He said:
We hope this will inform the allocation of water for power generation when it’s due for review in a fortnight.
