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Oliver Kazunga Senior Business Reporter
POWER generation in the country has improved from an average of 1,200 megawatts at the beginning of the year to above 1,400MW largely due to plant maintenance and refurbishment work.According to the Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC) website, as of yesterday the country was producing 1,437MW.
Hwange Thermal Power Station, which has installed capacity of 920MW, was producing 641MW while Kariba Hydro Power Station was generating 698MW against an installed capacity of 750MW.
The country’s three small thermal power stations – Munyati, Bulawayo and Harare, as of yesterday were generating 28MW, 40MW and 30MW respectively.
Power imports from Hydro Cabora Bassa were 50MW while the country was also exporting 108MW to regional utilities, Namibia Power Company (NamPower) and 84MW to SNEL of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The country’s power utility, Zesa Holdings was exporting power to Namibia and DRC as part of efforts settle electricity debts acquired from NamPower and SNEL a few years ago.
The Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (Zera) chief executive officer Engineer Gloria Magombo attributed the increased power generation capacity to plant maintenance works at Hwange Power Station.
“One of the key issues that have seen power generation in the country improving since the beginning of the year is as a result of the plant maintenance works at Hwange Thermal Power Station.
“In the past, the power station (Hwange) has not been doing well but because of plant overhaul, power generation at the plant has improved adding 245MW from about 400MW at the beginning of the year,” she said.
Efforts to get a comment from the ZPC managing director Engineer Noah Gwariro were fruitless as he was not answering his phone yesterday.
However, the ZPC indicated that all the six units at Hwange were in service.
“At Harare, station 2 was shutdown on July 25, 2014 at 2145hrs after boilers six and nine developed tube leaks. Repair works are in progress. Boiler 2 is on standby, boiler 6 is on standby, boiler 8 is on boiler tube leak repairs . . . ,” said ZPC.
It indicated that maintenance works were also in progress at Munyati, Bulawayo, and Kariba.
At Bulawayo Thermal Power Station, the power company said boiler 5 was on statutory inspection, boiler 6 returned to service on Saturday, boiler 8 was on refractory repairs while generator 3 returned to service on Saturday and refurbishment works at generator 5 were expected to be carried out during the repowering project.
As part of efforts to increase electricity generation, Zesa Holdings was in the process of expanding Kariba South power plant by at least 300MW.
Expansion at Kariba and Hwange plants was expected to see Zimbabwe generating about 2,500 MW against a peak demand of 2,200MW.
At the moment, there are a number of projects that are at different stages of development by independent power producers which are expected to improve electricity generation in Zimbabwe in the next few years.
derick.khumalo