ZESA Holdings is currently unable to avail a load-shedding timetable due to the unreliability of Hwange Power Station which is now very old and constantly breaks down.
This was said by Energy and Power Development Minister Zhemu Soda on Wednesday in the National Assembly while responding to lawmakers who wanted to know why the power utility had stopped issuing load-shedding schedules. Soda said:
At the moment, it’s very difficult to come up with a schedule because we have unplanned power outages at Hwange due to its age.
We cannot plan well based on the capacity of Hwange. We have unplanned outages that are occurring from Hwange.
In the morning today, we were obtaining a capacity of 387 megawatts, and you will be surprised that it can go down to 100 megawatts.
Of the four units that are currently in service, some would have gone out of service. So the power station is not reliable at the moment because of age.
We will soon be availing a load-shedding schedule after the coming in of unit seven and unit eight.
If there is going to be any deficit after the two units come in, then ZESA will have to give a load-shedding schedule.
Zimbabwe’s largest power plant is the Kariba South Bank Hydro, with an installed capacity of 1 050MW followed by Hwange Thermal Power Station with an installed 920MW capacity.
By Thursday afternoon, the Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC) was yet to post the power generation statistics on its website.
But the previous day, Wednesday, 08 March, Hwange was generating 401MW, Kariba was producing 253MW and Harare was on 12MW, giving a total of 666MW.
The other two power stations, Munyati and Bulawayo were producing zero.
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