Page 9 - AfrElec Week 30 2022

AfrElec TRADING AfrElec

Zambia now exporting

excess electricity to

neighbouring countries

ZAMBIA ZAMBIA has declared it now generates more “Since we are able to meet national demand,”
electricity than it needs so will export the sur- he said, “we have seen Zambia’s economy grow
plus into a southern African power trading pool, from a receding gross domestic product (GDP)
reports say. in 2020 to 3% growth in 2021 across all sectors.
Citing the managing director of state-owned With this background, we are ambitious that the
power company, ZESCO, Victor Mapani, national GDP growth will soon reach levels of 5
NewZimbabwe reported on July 22 that Africa’s to 7% in the next 3 to 5 years.”
number two copper producer, whose economy While Zambia has attained a surplus, black-
is also rebounding, has a power surplus of more outs intensified in Zimbabwe since July 13. Two
than 1,000MW. days earlier, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s
Speaking at a high-level panel discussion government had granted the national power
at the Association of Power Utilities of Africa company, ZESA Holdings, permission to bill
(APUA) meeting in Dakar, Senegal, he said the exporting companies in foreign currency so it
country’s installed national generation capacity can raise enough forex to finance importation
was 3,456.8MW compared to a peak national of electricity.
demand of approximately 2,300MW. Legislators took on Energy minister, Zhemu
“We thus have a surplus of 1,156.8 MW that Soda on Wednesday, July 20. He admitted that
is available for trade within the interconnected the previous week was the country’s worst in
SAPP [Southern African Power Pool] network,” terms of electricity load shedding (deliberate
he said. cutting off of supplies for ZESA to better prior-
He also said that ZESCO was using inter- itise the little energy available and to prevent a
nally generated resources to build a $2.3bn, total system collapse) in the country.
750MW hydro project which will be completed “That was occasioned by the failure of one of
in November. our units at Kariba Power Station,” he said.
“Currently four out of five units are already “Unit 6 went out of the grid last week which
commissioned and running. We expect to com- produces about 125MW. We also had problems
mission the last 150 MW machine, Unit 5 by with generation from Hwange Power Station
November this year,” Mapani said. where for the major part of last week, the sta-
He added that the availability of reliable elec- tion was running on two units but by the end
tricity is underpinning the current rebound of of last week, two units had been recovered from
Zambia’s economy. Hwange Power station.”™

Week 30 28•July•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P9