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    HomeNewsMasvingo city soon off national grid as local power plant takes off

    Masvingo city soon off national grid as local power plant takes off

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    Masvingo (New Ziana)- Masvingo, Zimbabwe’s oldest city, will soon be off the national power grid following development of a 5MW hydro power station at Lake Mutirikwi which will primarily supply the southern city, an official has said. The power facility is currently undergoing pre-commissioning tests.

    Lake Mutirikwi is the country’s second largest dam and supplies irrigation water to sugarcane producing estates of Triangle and Hippo Valley in the Lowveld. Great Zimbabwe Hydro Power Company, one of several independent power producers that have come on stream, built the power plant, and will feed its electricity into the national grid.

    Site manager for Great Zimbabwe Hydro, Engineer Osteen Chiboora told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Lands, Agriculture, Water, Fisheries and Rural Development which visited the power plant to assess project’s progress, that the mini-hydro power plant at Lake Mutirikwi Dam is almost complete with the 5 MW of electricity expected to be fed into the national grid anytime before the end of this year.

    “We are developing a 5 Megawatt power plant at Lake Mutirikwi. With our project, we have moved significantly; we are now at 97 percent complete,” he said.

    Engineer Chiboora said the power plant had reached commissioning stage.

    “The stage we are now on is what we call commissioning. We started with dry commissioning which is now 100 percent done and now we are starting wet commissioning where we will actually be running the plant at the same time synchronising with ZETDC. When the synchronisation is successful, then we are ready to deliver power into the national grid. In the coming two weeks we will likely finish all these issues,” he said.

    The project is one of several power ventures the country is undertaking to ensure both electricity self-sufficiency and clean energy in line with global trends. The 5MW of electricity to be generated at the mini- hydro plant is adequate to power Masvingo domestic users, said Engineer Chiboora. The Government has since announced plans to have a second 5MW plant further downstream taking the power output along Lake Mutirikwi River to 10MW.

    The mini-station is one of several planned for the larger irrigation dams, including the 17 MW hydro power plant planned for Tugwi- Mukosi Dam, the country’s largest dam which is also located in Masvingo province.

     

    New Ziana

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