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Patrick Chitumba Senior Reporter
THE government plans to invest millions of dollars in upgrading its power generating equipment protection system to withstand external shocks coming from outside the country, a senior official has said.Faults emanating from Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) grid damage or cause the country’s power equipment to trip resulting in its malfunctioning resulting in extended power cuts.
SAPP is a cooperation of the national electricity companies in Southern Africa under the auspices of the Sadc .
In an interview at Hwange Power Station on Wednesday, Energy and Power Development deputy minister, Engineer Munacho Mutezo said there were faults happening outside the country’s borders that were affecting local power generation.
“We have an integrated system in Sadc under SAPP and we therefore need to protect our equipment all the time,” said Eng. Mutezo.
“We need to be vigilant and look after our equipment. A programme has started whereby we are upgrading protection systems so that if there is loss of generation of power or faults coming from Zimbabwe, our equipment can handle it without too much disturbance or tripping.”
Eng Mutezo said work on the protection of the equipment had already been completed at Kariba Power Station.
“We have already finished the work at Kariba. Part of the work has been done here (HPS) but is not complete and is also happening at substations at Insukamini and other areas to enforce our systems so that if we have such problems in future, we should not be interrupted,” he said.
The protection system upgrading exercise is expected to be completed before the end of the year.
Eng Mutezo said SAAP the power grids were interconnected adding that faults in one country could affect the other.
Asked on how much the exercise was going to cost the country, EngMutezo said: “As you know, all exercises to do with power generation are very expensive. So I don’t have the figures right now but we looking at investing millions of dollars into this.”
Last week, Zimbabwe was hit by severe electricity outages following a breakdown at HPS, which produces 500-600MW of power after production was halted due to a fault from a SAPP grid in South Africa.
On Wednesday, three power generating units were down at Hwange as a result of a fault emanating from a grid in South Africa. Zimbabwe produces 1,200 megawatts of electricity, most of it from Hwange and a hydropower station on the Kariba dam against a peak demand of 2,200MW.
It also imports 600 MW from Zambia, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to meet current demand.
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