Harare (New Ziana)-The first of the two units being built at the Hwange power station will start feeding an additional 300 Megawatts of power to the national grid on March 16, Parliament heard on Wednesday.
When complete, the two units, Hwange 7 and 8, are expected to produce a total of 600 megawatts.
The additional electricity is expected to go a long way in easing power shortages currently being experienced following the breaking down of the other units at Hwange recently.
Energy and Power Development Minister Zhemu Soda said this while responding to a question from Chegutu West legislator Dexter Nduna on when power cuts would end.
“There are a lot of efforts that are being made in that regard with the intention that we will have energy self-sufficiency in the country. You might be aware that in 2018, the Government embarked on the expansion of Hwange Power Station with the intention of adding to the grid 600 megawatts which is currently being worked on.
“One of the units will be coming online soon. In the meeting that we held just recently with ZESA; they have now confirmed that Unit 7 shall be tied to the grid on the 16th of March. The second unit which is Unit 8, they are still working on and will be coming in a month later to give us the 600 megawatts. I am aware that people would have wanted this project to be completed early but this is the gestation of power stations, especially power stations when they are being constructed. We could not achieve that earlier than the gestation or lead time, which was provided for the project, but we now have a concrete date that by the 16th of March – according to ZESA -300 Megawatts will start to be fed into the grid,” he said.
On ongoing power shortages, Soda it was a result of the malfunctioning of three units at Hwange power station.
“I think this week we noticed that there was a depressed power supply situation which was occasioned by an unfortunate outage of Hwange, where we lost three units successively from the 23rd and 24th of February. Shortly before we lost those three units, Hwange was sending to the grid around 440 megawatts, and we came down to 77 megawatts. This is as a result of the age of the equipment which we have always spoken about.
“With regards to Hwange Power Station which I said we lost three units, ZESA engineers are working round the clock to bring back the units. Obviously, if that happens, we will be having a generation which should sustain the economy,” he said.
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