ZESA executive chairman Sydney Gata has attributed the current power shortages in the country to illegal sanctions imposed on the country by Western powers, which have prevented the power utility and other entities from accessing concessionary loans for infrastructure development.
As a result, Zimbabweans are enduring daily blackouts lasting at least 15 hours in their homes and businesses.
To prevent the collapse of the national grid, ZESA has implemented stringent power rationing measures.
In an exclusive interview with The Herald in Harare on Thursday, Gata explained that the power crisis has been further exacerbated by drought, which has severely reduced the water available for power generation at the Kariba Dam. Said Gata:
We have been unfortunate with Kariba hydrology or Zambezi hydrology to be more accurate. We have lost the capacity of Kariba… drastic losses.
For instance, the power station is rated at 1050MW today but we are hardly producing 150MW.
What hurts the most is that Kariba is normally our baseload plant because it is cheap to deploy and also highly reliable.
Hydropower plants have less equipment on them and are more stable to operate than confined power plants throughout the world.
So, we lost our cheapest source of energy and our most reliable source of energy and that explains today’s load shedding.
On October 22, the Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC), ZESA’s power generating unit, reported that the country was producing a total of 1,012 MW of electricity.
This included 784 MW from Hwange, 184 MW from Kariba, and 43 MW from Independent Power Producers (IPPs).
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