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ZESA tightens load-shedding regime
The Sunday News
August 17, 2008

The Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority has in the past few weeks tightened its load shedding regime as it anticipated reduced power supply, with some areas going for as much as 12 hours without power." According to the initial load shedding scheme released by ZESA, electricity was to be cut for about four hours a day, but recently the load shedding seems to be haphazard without a clear timetable. Zesa spokesman, Mr Fullard Gwasira said the utility had no choice but increase the hours when electricity was cut due to reduced power generation at Hwange Power Station. "We are facing coal constraints, output is down to 120 megawatts instead of the usual 500," he said yesterday. Mr Gwasira said some conveyor belts had broken down at Hwange Colliery Mine, but these had since been repaired. He was optimistic that the situation was going to improve mid this week.

The failure by the authority to provide adequate power comes at a time when repairs to Hydro Cahorra Bassa Dam had been completed and Zimbabwe was expected to be one of the countries to benefit from power exports. Zimbabwe was expected to buy 200MW of power from HCB, which should ease the power shortage. However, Mr Gwasira said they were not getting that much power from the giant Mozambique Dam, instead he said the country was getting 50MW.

He said when the utility had enough money it had an agreement to buy up to 150MW. It has also been revealed that at a time the country was facing power shortages, Zesa had entered into a deal with South African power utility, Eskom, for the refurbishment of three power stations with a combined generation of 500MW. Presently Zesa has a deal with Nampower of Namibia. Mr Gwasira however declined that they had entered into any deal with Eskom. "We hear about the Eskom deal from the media, we have no such deal," he said.

"We are only in an agreement with Zimasco."

However, sources at Zesa claimed that load shedding was here to stay, as most power stations at the power utility were in an advanced state of disrepair. They revealed that load shedding was going to be tightened this week, with power cuts set to last for almost 24 hours. They revealed that power generation was constrained at Hwange and this was worsened by the fact 40MW of power had to be exported to Namibia daily. A source revealed that most of the power generating units at the colliery were down and this had an adverse effect on power supply. "Only units 3 and 6 are operating and the rest are down," the source said. "Unit 6 was only brought on line recently but it constantly develops faults." The source said power generated from unit 3 was shared between Namibia and Zimbabwe and this meant that not much power was being used for the country. He said units 1 and 4 had developed outages and were not producing any electricity. An Indian company was contracted to repair the two units and they were supposed to have finished the repairs. "At the rate they are going, I do not see them completing the repairs before December," he said. Zesa was also failing to get spares to repair unit 5, as most of the parts were obsolete. The utility was reportedly removing spares from other units in an effort to repair the unit, but this had failed.

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