LIVINGSTONE MARUFU
Zambezi River Authority (ZRA) has said a tight water management system will help to ensure the power production level of up to 750 megawatts is maintained at Kariba till the rainy season as the country moves to reduce massive load shedding.
This comes at a time when the country’s power utility, ZESA Holdings, is rolling out massive power load-shedding of up to 18 hours due to low generation at its power plants.
ZRA is a corporation jointly and equally owned by the governments of Zambia and Zimbabwe. It is a governed by a four-person council consisting of the Ministers of Energy and Finance of each country. Its primary function is to operate and maintain the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River.
An official at ZRA told Business Times that the authority will continue managing the low water levels while at the same time ensuring that the hydro power station continues to operate.
“We are confident that if we keep managing our reservoirs well and continue generating power at current levels of 750MW at Kariba we will see ourselves through to rainy season despite very low water levels at our main water of source of electricity generation,” an official said.
ZRA said of the 180 billion cubic metres of water at Lake Kariba, only 65 billion cubic metres of water is live water, water which can be able to produce electricity, with the balance being dead water.
The river authority assured the country that until December no hydro power station would fail to generate power due to low water levels.
ZRA has reduced water allocation to ZPC from 19 billion cubic metres to 16 billion cubic metres for 2019.
This has resulted in massive power cuts being experienced across the country due to reduced generation capacity at the main power stations and reduced water allocation and loadshedding are part of efforts to mitigate the situation.
The addition of 300 megawatts to the national grid last year after the expansion of Kariba South Hydro Power plant had stabilised the electricity supply situation in the country.
Most of the times, electricity generation at Kariba Power Station was at an average of 358MW from the planned average of 542MW.
Due to low inflows into Lake Kariba recorded in the 2018/19 season, the power utility said the water supply situation and power generation at Kariba will be reviewed as the year progresses.
The situation is exacerbated by the failure of Hwange Thermal Power Station, which has an installed capacity of 920MW, to come to the rescue due to obsolete power stations.
Given this scenario consumers have been advised to switch off all non-essential loads in the interest of maintaining a balance between the supply of power available and demand to ensure stability of the grid during morning and evening peak periods.
Large power users were requested to reduce their power demand during the morning and evening peak periods of 5am to 10am and 5pm to 10pm respectively.
As of Wednesday this week, indications were that the country was generating a combined 1203MW with Kariba contributing 691MW.
Zimbabwe has been working on projects meant to boost power generation so that the country is able to generate enough electricity by 2022 to meet local demand as well as exports to the region.
Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (Zera) has licensed 51 independent power producers across the country in the last five years to date to augment primary producers.
Zera acting chief executive Eddington Mazambani said the authority had given operating licences to many independent power producers but some faced challenges in accessing foreign currency to implement the projects.
The company that was licensed to establish a 5MW hydro power plant at the massive Tugwi-Mukosi Dam in Masvingo was expected to commence work before year end.
This year the regulatory authority looks forward to licensing 12 IPPs.
“For Masvingo, apart from Tugwi-Mukosi, we have licensed three other independent power producers for Lake Mutirikwi and Nuanetsi, which had some contestations but are now ready to start and Mkwasine project in Chiredzi District,” Mazambani said.
Some IPP projects in Zimbabwe include Duru mini hydro (2,20MW), Green Fuel (18,30MW), Nyamhingura mini hydro (1,10MW), Hippo Valley Estates (33MW), Triangle Estates (45MW) and Pungwe Power Station (19MW), among others.
Mazambani said that most of the projects were in Manicaland given the proven idealness of the mountainous terrains in mini-hydro power generation.
He, however, said the Lake Mutirikwi project had stalled over challenges to do with tariff issues between the investors and Zera but that has since been resolved.
The country needs about US$5 billion to address its power deficit.
According to Zera, independent power producers contribute 137,08 gigawatt hours to the national grid, which is around two percent of the country’s power generation capacity.
