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Load shedding 101: Zim lessons for SA power crunch

Harare - South Africa is pretty new to electricity supply problems compared to Zimbabwe and it can learn much more from its northern neighbour on managing the current power crunch.

Engineer Julian Chinemberi, the managing director of the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) told Zimbabwe’s parliament on Monday that the state power utility was managing power shortages through using electricity meters, switching from incandescent to fluorescent lights and expanding existing power stations.

Power outages have become common in Zimbabwe and every year the situation worsens, starting in May, with rises owing to the winter weather. Across the Limpopo, Eskom is facing power generating capacity bottlenecks that have tipped SA into stage 1 and stage 2 load shedding this month.

Zimbabwe currently produces about 1 100 MW of electricity against peak demand of nearly 2 000 MW. It tries to cover for the huge deficit through imports from Mozambique, DRC, Eskom and from Zambia.

However, Mozambique is now demanding cash upfront while a power crunch in SA has also meant no power from Eskom, while imports from the DRC have been described as unreliable, according to Chinembiri.

“We have a non-firm agreement with Eskom but they themselves are currently facing challenges whereby they don’t have excess power to give us. Their power is expensive. It’s the most expensive in the region. We only use power from Eskom in emergency, especially after a blackout,” said Chinembiri.

IPPs, pre-paid

The ZETDC says it manages the big power deficit Zimbabwe is grappling with through “load shedding” while plans are afoot to “improve our generation” capacity. This will see Zimbabwe extend the Kariba hydro power station (which currently has six functional units) by two more units that will add 300 MW of power by 2017.

At present, four out of six power units are operational at the Hwange thermal power plant and Chinembiri said work to boost the station by two more generating units which will produce 600 MW are under way.  

Independent power producer arrangements are also being pursued while smaller thermal power stations in Harare and Bulawayo also add smaller amounts of electricity to the national grid.

READ: Energy Dept looks to private sector to solve electricity crisis - as it happened

“When we put [out] pre-paid meters, it helped people to save electricity. We rolled out more efficient fluorescent lights in houses. Our street lights are on 24 hours a day and we want to engage the local authorities to address this and we want them to replace the street lights with LED lights and also move on to use solar energy for street lighting.”

The Zimbabwean state power utility says most of its power consumers are now on pre-paid meters. However, areas in high density residential areas in Harare and Bulawayo are still using post-paid billing.

READ: Molefe: Pre-paid could save Eskom's bacon

Chinembiri added that the government should also weigh in on the policy framework by reducing duty on imports of “energy efficient equipment and the banning of incandescent lights”.

Zimbabwe can also be a lesson for SA on what not to do. For example, the state power utility is owed several hundreds of millions in unpaid electricity bills, with government departments, parastatals and ministries largely owing it. Under new policies, all new buildings are to have solar water heaters.

Parastatals owe the power utility $28.5m while government ministries owe about $18.3m. Zimbabwe’s parliament was also told that all of the power utility’s workers and officials from the ministry of energy did not pay for electricity consumed at their houses.

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