Bulawayo Power Station refurbishment contract under review

THE Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC) is reviewing a draft contract received from India Export and Import Bank for the $87 million Bulawayo Thermal Power Station repowering project.

Government secured the $87 million loan from India Export and Import Bank (India-EximBank) last year for the refurbishment of the Bulawayo Thermal Power Station, which was built 60 years ago. The ZPC/India-Exim Bank deal was clinched in 2015 following President Mugabe's official visit to that country.

In May this year, Secretary for Energy and Power Development Mr Partson Mbiriri said the first quarter rehabilitation commencement deadline had been missed and at that stage the Government said it had no control of the procurement process.

ZPC managing director, Engineer Noah Gwariro said tenders for the thermal power station project closed in August and a single bid was received.

"The draft contract, which was received from India Exim Bank is being reviewed," he said in a statement.

About $30 million of the $87 million has since been extended towards the rehabilitation project but the project is yet to kick off.

The tendering process to engage contractors to do the Bulawayo repowering project was done in New Delhi with the procurement processes for the project also expected to be done in India while ZPC would be involved in the process.

The power station's refurbishment process includes among other activities; replacing old boilers with state-of- the-art boilers. The Bulawayo Power Station has an installed capacity of 120 megawatts and as of yesterday it was not producing anything.

Meanwhile, Eng Gwariro said ZPC has missed its overall production target for the third quarter by 4.46 percent, generating 20229.88 Gigawatts per hour against the targeted 2124.59GWh. He said to date output stood at 5430.00GWh against the targeted 5886.01GWh, showing a negative variance of 7.75 percent. The ZPC boss attributed the below target performance in power generation to a number of factors.

"A number of factors affected our performance and these include the various forced outages that were faced at Hwange and the small thermal power stations. Hwange failed to meet their sent out target as a result of the delayed return to service of Unit 6 from major overhaul, numerous tube leaks as well as milling plant challenges," said Eng Gwariro.

He said output at the country's small thermal power stations were constrained due to unavailability of coal.

"Coal suppliers fell short of their delivery targets for the quarter resulting in depleted stock levels at the thermal stations. This is due to the various challenges that are being faced by the coal miners, chief amongst them being delayed recapitalisation on the key mining equipment and cash flows.

"This challenge is therefore preventing most of the miners from processing enough coal required to meet their delivery targets to the stations," said Eng Gwariro.

He said water levels at Lake Kariba dropped from 483.19 metres at the end of the second quarter to 481.99 metres at the end of September 2017 representing a 1.2 metres drop in lake level over the quarter. The lake is 46.89 percent full.

"The Kariba South Extension project progress increased from 89 percent at the beginning of the quarter to 92.2 percent by the end of the quarter against a target of 92.7 percent.

"The project is now being driven under the Office of the President and Cabinet's Rapid Results Initiative and the first 100 days under the initiative are running from August 28, 2017 to December 5, 2017," he said.

On Hwange Thermal Power Station, Eng Gwariro said fund-raising was still in progress for Unit 7 and 8 expansion project with a team from Sinohydro team presently in Hwange preparing for pre-commencement activities.