Minister of Energy and Power Development Edgar Moyo has given a depressing update on the current loadshedding situation in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe is currently facing severe and frequent power outages. According to the latest reports, Zimbabwe is only producing about 600 megawatts (MW) of electricity against a daily demand of about 2,000 MW. This means that many households and businesses must put up with 18 hours of load shedding daily.
The main reasons for the power crisis are the low water levels in Lake Kariba, which limit the output of the Kariba hydropower plant, and the ageing and unreliable coal-fired thermal plants, which often break down or run out of fuel.
This week, parliamentarians took Energy Minister Edgar Moyo to task over the continued power outages. The Minister laid the blame on the Lake Kariba water levels, a problem known to happen every year:
“‘Yes indeed, we are going through a depressed generation in all our power stations in the country at the moment.
The reasons are: firstly, hydrological issues at Kariba Dam, where our water levels have since gone so low that we now have a depressed generation at Kariba. Our normal storing capacity in Kariba is 1050 megawatts, but we are currently running between 250 and 300 megawatts, and that is already a depressed capacity for generation.”
He tried to point a glimmer of hope, revealing when the situation might improve. He, however, highlighted that it’s uncertain when load shedding will end:
“We are going to begin to experience reduced load shedding at the end of November when Unit 7 comes on board. However, on complete load shedding, I cannot give a timeline at the moment because we are working on repowering Units 1 to 6, and each time we are repowering these units, we will be taking one unit out at a time.
“Once it is repaired, we take another unit. It is going to take a little bit of time, but, however, we are banking mainly on independent power producers that I have said are currently projects that are ongoing up to about 600 megawatts.
I cannot give that timetable, but we are working towards that. In terms of power import, we expect to eliminate that by 2025. That is how I can respond.”
Source iHarare
