Page 8 - AfrElec Week 48 2022
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Christmas power outages
loom over Zimbabwe as
Kariba South shuts
ZIMBABWE ZIMBABWE is bracing for more power outages Kariba South Bank Power Station,” said Munod-
after an entity that manages a lake that gener- awafa in a statement.
ates electricity for the country and neighbour- Kariba South Bank Power Station, north-
ing Zambia has barred the former from using west of the country, was producing 602MW by
water in the reservoir for that purpose, as it has 9:50am Zimbabwe time on Tuesday (November
exhausted its annual quota. 29) out of its installed capacity of 1,050MW,
The jointly owned Zambezi River Authority according to data on the Zimbabwe Power Com-
(ZRA) oversees the management of Lake Kar- pany (ZPC) website.
iba, where the two countries produce about Hwange coal-fired plant to the west was gen-
2,100MW of their power through two separate erating 150MW with a smaller thermal facility,
facilities of equal capacity. Munyati producing 12MW. This brought ZPC’s
The authority, New Zimbabwe reported on output at the time to 764MW, yet demand in the
Monday (November 28), told Zimbabwe’s gov- southern African country is about 1,950MW.
ernment that it had used up its annual share of “If the current water utilisation above alloca-
the water produce power. tion at Kariba South Bank Power Station contin-
ZRA chief executive Munyaradzi Munod- ues, the remaining water for power generation at
awafa said that as at November 25, Zimbabwe’s Kariba (live storage) will run out by mid-Decem-
Kariba South Bank Power Station had utilised ber 2022, or much earlier.
23.89bn cubic metres (BCM) of water, account- “[The] Zambezi River Authority is left with
ing for 1.39BCM (or 6.16%) above the 2022 no choice but to firmly guide that ZPC/KHPC
water allocation of 22,50BCM. immediately ensures that generation activities
“Given that the Kariba Reservoir usable stor- at the South Bank Power Station are wholly sus-
age currently stands at a paltry 2.98 BCM or pended henceforth, until January 2023.”
4.60% full, and that ZESCO Limited (of Zambia) The order for ZPC to stop producing elec-
still has a positive balance of 2,44BCM (10.82%) tricity at Kariba could plunge the country into
as of 25 November 2022, ZPC/KHPC [of Zimba- a deeper energy crisis. Already, the country is
bwe] no longer has any usable water to continue suffering outages as long as 12 hours a day or
undertaking power generation operations at more.
P8 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 48 30•November•2022
