ZESA lights up Christmas mood

MARTHA MAMOMBE

Power utility ZESA Holdings has lit up the Christmas mood saying the country’s electricity supply has increased owing to government intervention.

In a statement, ZESA Holdings said it had secured the much-needed foreign currency to augment power imports from the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) after Kariba Power Plant was ordered to cease operations by the Zambezi River Authority  (ZRA) due to depressed water levels.

There were fears that Zimbabwe would go into Christmas holidays without power dimming the festive mood in the process.

“ZESA Holdings is pleased to advise its valued stakeholders of the increased electricity supply in the country, which has resulted in reduced load curtailment across all our customer segments,” the power utility said in a statement.

The company said the 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 ZRA..

“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.”

ZESA Holdings added that in the past weeks, there has been extensively engaging with various stakeholders so as to implement critical measures to alleviate the power deficit challenges which they said is not unique to Zimbabwe.

“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 Five (5) of the Six (6) being currently operational which has increased supply to the national grid.”

“This will help ease the demand supply gap during the festive break as we also anticipate reduced demand from the business sector during the period,” ZESA Holdings said.

“Zimbabwe has a clear roadmap to transition its power generation to support a green economy to include the Batoka project which will be a joint venture between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Discussions are being sped up while financiers are being sought.”

The electricity firm also expressed gratitude over the government support for Independent Power Producers saying it will go a long way in addressing the power crisis.

“We are delighted by the recent announcement by Government to support a good number of Independent Power Producer (IPP) projects, mostly Solar which have been awaiting a Guarantee Structure.

The Ministry of Energy and Power Development and ZESA will procure this capacity to the extent to not only balance supply and demand, but also to export surplus capacity, as well as to conserve water in Lake Kariba which will be used both as a balancing plant for Renewables as well as Energy Banking for IPPs via Conjunctive Dispatch.”

“The general shortage of power in the region will inevitably translate to increased costs of Electricity.”