The government says the severe and ongoing power cuts affecting the country are due to depressed power generation at the Hwange power station.
The state-owned power utility, ZESA Holdings, has been implementing lengthy daily blackouts of up to 15 hours in some areas due to the reduced power output from its power stations.
At its peak, Zimbabwe requires at least 2,200 MW of electricity, but the Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC), a subsidiary of ZESA Holdings, is currently generating less than 1,300 MW.
Addressing the media during a post-Cabinet briefing in Harare on Tuesday, Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Minister Anxious Masuka said the power cuts were a direct result of outages at the Hwange Power Station. He said:
In the past week or so we have had an increase in power cuts but that is due to depressed generation because of the outages at Hwange. We were promised that two units will be coming on board and the Minister of Energy and Power Development presented today that most likely those two units are already feeding into the grid.
Currently, generation is about 1 400MW per day supplemented by imports. We are currently somewhere between 1 500MW-1 600MW against a maximum demand per day of 1 825MW as presented by the Minister of Energy and Power Development today.
However, according to statistics released by ZPC on Thursday, July 18, the power generation breakdown was as follows:
- Hwange Power Station: 979 MW
- Kariba Power Station: 292 MW
- Independent Power Producers (IPPs): 43 MW
- Total power generation: 1,314 MW
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