Humans are built to adapt and we are really good at it. I think the Zimbabwean is particularly excellent at this. There is no point in mourning over what won’t change no matter how much you murmur and complain. Hence why we no longer bat an eye at rolling 16-hour blackouts.
The electricity situation has been dreadful and we have all accepted it. We have turned to solar and diesel power, they are more expensive but offer reliability like Zesa never could.
Generator power
Unfortunately for us, this teapot nation finds new ways to pummel us. If you go the generator route, easing your own demand on the inadequate national grid, you still have to cough up the dough. You need a licence to operate a generator over 5kva.
A Harare man was recently hit with a ZW$100,000 fine for operating such a generator without a licence. The man was angry as you would expect and it’s hard to argue with the point some have made regarding this,
Imagine, you must now pay tax to operate a generator in Zimbabwe over 5kva. Yet, you have to do so because the govt can’t supply power…
… Govt fails to deliver a basic service, citizens are forced to make a plan & then govt exploits this with a licensing levy.
The Environmental Management Agency (EMA) says this is all to protect the public. They clarified that it’s not about the power generation capacity of the generator being used. Rather, it’s about the amount of fuel it consumes per hour.
If your generator consumes more than 5kg per hour of fuel and is being used at the commercial level or for industrial purposes then you need a licence for it.
These fuel chuggers emit fumes by the boatload. If a few households on your street had these bad boys you would suffer for it. So, it does make sense that EMA would regulate some of this.
I hope this means they would refuse those who would use such fuel chuggers licences if they wanted to use them in residential areas unless there is a way to deal with the fumes. It defeats the purpose if they can just pay to use those generators. The licence would then be just a revenue-generating exercise on EMA’s part.
Solar power
The situation is just as bad for those who can’t afford 5kva generators. Solar setups are expensive too. However, the Chinese have our backs there with their cheap but low-quality solar panels, inverters and batteries. These are the ones that most Zimbabweans are buying.
You get what you pay for, I know, but it still feels like people are being fleeced with this equipment that claims to have 10-year warranties but conks out after just a few months. There will be no returns or refunds, unfortunately.
The nightmare to end?
Could we yet rely on the national power company? There are developments there that could mean the end of our electricity problems. Okay, maybe not the end but maybe the easing of said challenges.
The situation on the ground is this, installed capacity is around 2300MW, and actual power generation capacity is 1400MW whilst peak demand is 1700MW in summer and 2200MW in winter.
As you know, capacity does not equal actual production. We are producing less than our 1400MW generation capacity. Worsening the shortfall, hence the crazy power cuts.
Power generation fell when water levels at Kariba fell massively. We had to shut all power generation at Kariba for a while.
In late December 2022, it got so bad that of the water in the reservoir, only 0.77% was usable. Since then, as the rains have continued pouring down, the lake levels have been slowly increasing. Usable storage was up to 8.91% on February 13th.
As that situation improves we are seeing improvements in the electricity supply. That doesn’t change the fact that our generation capacity is less than our peak demand though, even in the summer.
Where we used to turn to our neighbours for help, they are facing their own challenges and sometimes cannot provide us with the balance we need to keep the lights on. It also doesn’t help that we also approach these arrangements with an ‘I’ll pay you when I pay you’ kind of attitude.
Coal to the rescue
Hwange Unit 7 is set to add 300MW to the national grid sometime this February. Unit 7 will be the first to go live following the Hwange Thermal Power Station expansion project that started in 2018.
The Minister of Energy and Power Development says Unit 7 has undergone commissioning tests and has been successful. The system is now 99% complete and is now being synchronised to produce the exact voltage, frequencies and phasing to match the national grid.
After Unit 7 goes live, the Minister says we should expect Unit 8 to follow by June this year. You gotta love election year, stuff gets done.
We had 6 old units that are now unreliable and are operating at less than half of their designed output. These old Units will be rehabilitated too and the hope is that Hwange will produce its designed 920MW after all this.
I know that one should not say this in the current climate but I think Zimbabwe should lean on coal. We have 163 years’ worth of coal at current consumption levels, excluding unproven reserves.
Let’s add even more units at Hwange and solve our electricity problems once and for all. The world prefects that look down upon coal used it for decades whilst we slumbered. It’s our turn to use this abundant resource.
I mean, with climate change caused by their coal use back then, our rainfall patterns have changed. We just had to shut Kariba down for low water levels which means hydroelectricity is not as reliable as we once thought it was.
We do not have control over how much rain falls but we do have control over how much coal we mine. So, Hwange should be our priority, in my opinion.
That’s my two cents on this but tell us what you think about it in the comments section below.
Also read:
ZETDC installs its first smart meter at Harare Poly. But what is a smart meter anyway?
ZETDC’s 350 000 household connection deficit. What if…?
Zimbabwe’s unreliable electricity supply makes it the biggest adopter of solar systems in Africa
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