ZESA explains nationwide blackout

Zimbabwe's electricity utility, ZESA Holdings, has attributed Monday's nationwide power outage to a major fault on the Warren–Alaska 330kV transmission line, saying the incident destabilised the national grid and triggered the collapse of the country's electricity system.

In a technical update issued on Monday night, ZESA said the fault occurred at 6.24pm, causing severe voltage instability and under-frequency, which resulted in the loss of local electricity generation and widespread power outages across Zimbabwe.

The blackout affected households, businesses, industries and public services nationwide before restoration efforts began later in the evening.

According to the utility, restoration work commenced at 7.01pm, with engineers progressively restoring electricity supplies using imports from Eskom and Hydro Cahora Bassa, together with generation from Kariba Power Station and Units 1, 2 and 3 of Hwange Power Station.

"By 2200 hours, power had been successfully restored to most of our bulk supply points across the country," ZESA said.

The utility added that technical teams continued working overnight to synchronise the remaining generating units at Hwange Power Station while carrying out repairs at Warren Substation, which supplies parts of Harare.

ZESA apologised to customers for the inconvenience caused by what it described as an unprecedented system disturbance and assured the public that engineers were working around the clock to restore normal electricity supplies to all remaining affected areas.

The latest update follows Monday evening's sudden collapse of the national grid, which left millions of Zimbabweans without electricity before supplies began being restored in phases later that night.