Chronicle Editor
Rutendo Nyeve in Victoria Falls
THE Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission Distribution Company (ZETDC) is exploring the idea where companies with high electricity demand will import their own power to ease consumption as well as bidding for the Patanguwa project in Mozambique where the country will get 1 000 megawatts as part of measures aimed at increasing power generation to meet national demand.
With these measures, the power utility is expecting to extend the grid and ensure that the 350 000 customers who have applied for electricity connection are connected by 2025.
To accelerate the connections, the power utility is riding on the bi-lateral relations between Zimbabwe and Rwanda which culminated in a partnership between Zesa and the Rwanda Energy Group that will see Rwanda providing engineers and finance while Zesa will procure the equipment as well as recruit most of the personnel.
Applicants who have contributed money will be the first to be connected. ZETDC Acting Managing Director Engineer Howard Choga told Sunday News in an interview on the sidelines of the CEO Africa Roundtable Annual Conference that ended in Victoria Falls yesterday that the power utility was working round the clock to ensure uninterrupted electricity availability. He said they were also engaged in refurbishing and maintenance of the existing network in order to improve service delivery.
“We have a customer base of 850 000, those are the customers we have in our database at the moment. Of these, 745 000 of them are on prepaid meters and the remainder are on post-payment. We have 350 000 that are not yet connected. If you go around the country, be it in urban areas or rural areas, there are places that do not have electricity at the moment and they are part of the 350 000 customers.
“We have got facilities that are filling in space in a number of areas and we need to improve on them. We have got existing network which is suffering lack of maintenance and refurbishment, we also need to have innovations in terms of information technology solutions and we have got the future where we need to extend the grid and connect new customers,” said Eng Choga.
He hinted that applicants who have contributed money towards purchase of particular connection resources were guaranteed of connections while those that have not contributed, would have to wait for ZETDC to move in and connect them when the resources were available.
“In the connection of new customers, we have facilities that we are going to be using. One of them is the partnership with the Rwanda Energy Group. It is a group of companies just like Zesa has a group of companies. So Zesa has partnered Rwanda Energy Group for the purposes of accessing international financial markets to be able to implement the projects that we have. The connection of the 350 000 customers is one of the projects that we seek to undertake. If all requirements in the environment remain favourable, by 2025 we would have connected the 350 000,” said Eng Choga.
He said a lot of work was to do with Government-to-Government agreement hence the partnership was on different stages of implementation.
“There are procurement processes, relevant contractual documentation, and approval by different levels of Government, development of specifications and submission of proposals. So, it’s a full-fledged procurement process. Three to four projects are at implementation stage, several others have seen bids being submitted and we are at different stages of evaluating those bids. Others are still at proposal stage,” said Eng Choga.
Apart from the Zesa — Rwanda Energy Group partnership and the Unit 7 and 8 expansion projects, the power utility is pursuing various strategies to be able to build capacity for delivery of energy to meet national demand.
“One of our strategies is to invest out of Zimbabwe in terms of power generation capacity. We are also harnessing solar power with up to 800 megawatts but at the moment we have 500 megawatts which we believe should be connected within the next 12 to 18 months. We have also restructured the market in terms of forming and corporatising the intensive energy user group.
“This is a grouping of companies that have a high demand for electricity and we are trying to ensure that they will be able to import on their own. When they import, they take away two risks from the electricity market. The first one being the risk of payment where at times we are not able to pay because of the tariff structure issues. The second one is the capacity risk where if they are going to import on their own, whatever we have will be for the remainder of the customers.
“We are also at the bidding stage where the Government of Mozambique has invited different countries to submit bids for the development of the Patanguwa project. We expect to get 1 000 megawatts from that project. So, we intend to utilise these opportunities to ensure that we actually glide towards being able to avail the 2350 megawatts by end of 2025,” said Eng Choga.
The current electricity consumption is at 1 850 megawatts with the energy utility having the capacity to provide 1 400 megawatts hence the adoption of load shedding as a management measure. The mining sector and industrial sectors have applications that are aggregating to 2 350 megawatts.
“We believe that we will be up to the task in terms of providing electricity. The road might be tough but there are possibilities that we will be able to achieve if all requirements in the environment remain favourable. This is a function of people paying the correct amount in tariff, it is a function of us being able to continue with the investments that are happening now,” said Eng Choga. — @nyeve14
Online Reporter