AfrElec: Zimbabwe races to add 3,000 MW as power shortages trigger blackouts

Zimbabwean companies are developing energy projects to generate a total of 3,000 MW as the national power authority struggles to produce enough to meet growing demand.

If all the projects are commissioned as scheduled, they will ease pressure on the national grid which generates an average peak of 1,700 MW.

Bloomberg reported November 20 that the wave of investments started showing as soon as the national power authority introduced a cost-effective tariff in December 2023.

“Immediately after the tariffs were corrected, we called in industry, mining in particular and told them that now they can also invest in electricity infrastructure,” the news agency quoted Sydney Gata, executive chairman of the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA), as telling a recent energy summit in the country.

Frequent droughts and breakdowns of the southern African nation's aged coal-based facilities as well as their scheduled maintenance, constrain electricity production.  The main hydropower plant at Lake Kariba was producing 124.5 MW on November 19, far lower than its installed capacity of 1,050 MW owing to a low water level caused by a drought.  In total, the country was generating 1,275.5 MW on the day, data from ZESA’s generation unit showed, yet peak demand is around 1,800 MW.

The mining industry accounts for the bulk of that demand.

“As we are talking right now our sector demands approximately 700 MW and the projections from the survey that we did we anticipate that in the next three to five years we will be requiring about 2 000 MW, which is above what the country is currently generating,” Zimbabwe Chamber of Mines CEO Isaac Kwesu said at the same event.

In an effort to prevent a grid collapse, ZESA institutes blackouts of up to 15 hours daily.

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