Zesa says 'no more excessive power cuts'

Zimbabweans will not experience excessive load shedding during the festive period following the restoration of  generation units at Hwange Power Station as well as improved imports, power utility, Zesa Holdings has said.

This follows weeks of depressed generation caused by the dropping water levels at Lake Kariba which resulted in reduced power generation at Kariba South Power Station.

The situation was worsened by frequent breakdown of Hwange Power Station equipment which saw the station operating with two units during the period.

In a statement, Zesa said the power utility had managed to resuscitate five of the six Hwange units which had broken down.

"Zesa Holdings is pleased to advise its valued stakeholders of the increasing electricity supply in the country, which has resulted in reduced load curtailment across all our customer segments. Our Engineers and Technicians have been working frantically to ensure increased power generation," it said.

"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) (generating units) 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 business," Zesa said, adding that electricity imports had also been secured.

"We have successfully managed to secure the injection of additional imports from other SAPP members to support supply until the Kariba reservoir recovers in the first quarter of next year. We would like to express our profound gratitude for the support and commitment we got from the Government to mobilize the much needed foreign currency.

"Accordingly, Zesa would like to assure its valued customers that they will not experience the aggressive load curtailment they have been experiencing in the past few weeks during the festive period. The utility is conversant of the need to guarantee supply to the nation, and thus we not only have measures to mitigate the emergency but also opportunities to increase capacity and to improve service delivery", it said.

The Hwange Power Station expansion 7 and  8 which is set to bring an additional 600MW to the national grid has been delayed, said Zesa.

"Our valued stakeholders are advised that Hwange 7  and 8 commissioning preparations are well on course. To date, it is pleasing to see that the technical tests are progressing well and the Utility expects the first additional 300 Megawatts from Unit 7 soon.

"Every indication is that it has been built well. We are treading cautiously on the technical aspects so that we energize robust machinery, hence the need to follow all comprehensive commissioning tests," said Zesa.