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LOCAL engineering company Power Giants Africa has partnered GNEE China to provide smart energy solutions which will mostly target rural areas and industries.
Sealed in Harare last week, the partnership agreement seeks to create a billion-dollar solar project to bridge Zimbabwe’s power supply.
Speaking after signing the agreement with GNNE China, Power Giants Southern and East Africa chief executive officer Engineer Edzai Kachirekwa, said the partnership would positively impact on the country’s energy landscape by boosting power generation.
This would reduce dependence on existing power supply infrastructure in the country while also reducing or eliminating imports from regional utilities.
Eng Kachirekwa, who is also president of the Afro Eurasia Energy Centre, said plans were afoot to establish plants in all provinces to augument the national grid which was heavily reliant on the Hwange and Kariba power stations.
“This partnership will provide a solution to the power problems in the country. We will have plants in all provinces to complement Hwange and Kariba power stations.
“The model formulation attempts to strike a reasonable balance between the technical rigor of a network model and computational tractability.
“As a result, transmission has become a major bottleneck, not only in developing countries, but also in the developed world which has seen accumulation of 930 Gigawatts of clean generation ‘queued up’ waiting for transmission to be built.
“To prioritise upgrading and expansion of the transmission grid, there is a need to adopt a more holistic system wide view from a long-term perspective and develop a methodology as an enabler of clean generation,” said Eng Kachirekwa.
Such a methodology, he said, could be devised around a composite generation-transmission cooptimisation model.
“This idea sets the context within which ‘Green Transmission’ needs to be viewed and further proposes a modelling framework that brings together the critical elements in generation and transmission planning, including system security constraints as a mixed-integer linear programming problem.” GNEE China chief executive, Mr Wan Ke, said the project would resolve Zimbabwe’s power supply challenges and make the country self-reliant in terms of energy supply.
“We will apply China’s most advanced solar products and technologies to the solar power generation project in Zimbabwe and use our best project management team and construction team to ensure that the project will be put into operation as soon as possible.”
Guest of honour at the signing ceremony, Dr Tendesai Mushamba said: “This is an opportunity for Zimbabwe to deal with the power supply challenges it has been facing along with other countries in the region.
“The Government has led the way in bridging the power supply gap by upgrading the Kariba and Hwange power stations. It is time for the private sector to also step in and play a part.
“Before the Second Republic, we had decades of under investment in electricity generation that precipitated years of persistent power shortages in Zimbabwe.
“This partnership is going to reduce importation of electricity from neighbouring countries such as Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa.
Eng Kachirekwa has over the years, championed the transition from fossil fuels-driven energy to clean energy as Zimbabwe seeks to attain Sustainable Development Goal Number 7 which speaks to the provision of clean and reliable energy to stimulate economic development through promoting investment in energy infrastructure and clean energy technology.
“As I have always said, our country is endowed with vast mineral resources and a competent human resources base capable of securing a sustainable livelihood for every Zimbabwean and future generations.
“We are the ones responsible for building our own economy. No one will come from anywhere to do it for us, hence the Second Republic’s mantra “Nyika inovakwa neVene Vayo”.
“We are the owners of the country and the responsibility to make our country better lies with all of us collectively,” said Eng Kachirekwa.
“The world over, any functional economy is powered by a reliable energy sector so we must revolutionise our systems of harnessing power.
“We need sustainable ways that propel our economy to perform better such that eventually we become the region’s energy hub.”
Online Reporter