We have to talk about the electricity situation again. Late last month, the Zambezi River Authority let us know that they would be slashing water allocation for power generation by 25% over at Kariba. That would surely lead to load-shedding, right?
Apparently not because the government triumphantly declared the end of rolling blackouts. Said the Ministry of Information,
Cabinet noted with satisfaction that the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority has announced the end to load-shedding as a result of interventions implemented by the Second Republic
I have to admit, I’m at a loss here. I have no idea what the government is talking about here. The cabinet is satisfied, apparently, although I’m finding it difficult to comprehend what exactly is causing that contentment.
I actually missed that statement when it was released by the ministry because I was in the dark. We had no power in my neighbourhood for a few days straight and it was during that time that the end of load-shedding was announced. Hilarious!
To be fair though, it wasn’t classical load-shedding in my neighbourhood. It was most likely a fault but we get faults every fortnight in Mabelreign, I’m convinced they are a load-shedding tool. You won’t tell me otherwise on this, so don’t even try.
Of course, load-shedding is still very much a reality which means the statement above should be taken as a political statement.
If they had actually given us details on how the problem had been solved, we would have something to talk about. We don’t and so we have to bank on their declaration even as it goes against what we are experiencing on the ground.
Hwange can’t cope
We appreciate the developments we saw at Hwange. Units 7 and 8 went live this year and together they will contribute about 600MW to the grid. That’s a significant contribution and we all love it.
However, Kariba will be contributing less with each passing month until the next rainy season. Hwange can’t pick up that slack.
We could have demonstrated this clearly, but there seems to be a peculiar occurrence:
The ZPC website is down
The Zimbabwe Power Company website has been down for a little while. As you know, I keep a tinfoil hat under my bed and if I put it on, I can’t help but feel it has been intentionally taken down.
See, we could all see just where our power is coming from on that website. The last instance of the website that’s captured in the archives is from 8 June.
It showed Kariba contributing 900MW and Hwange producing 606MW. That was pretty much what we saw before the water allocation cuts at Kariba. So, we are not really sure how much power Kariba is producing post-water allocation cut but we know it’s less. Hwange was close to capacity then and won’t make up for that deficit.
I think that the little table above would work against the declaration that load-shedding is a thing of the past. We know that demand is at least 1400MW and so we would clearly see that we were not producing enough to meet demand.
I’m quietly chanting ‘BRING BACK THE WEBSITE’ in my head but am making sure I don’t vocalise it.
I’m probably drinking the strong stuff but I can’t shake the feeling that the website is not down because ZPC engineers can’t resolve a 404 issue. Nah, there’s probably a memo that says to leave it be. Or maybe not. Who knows?
What are your thoughts? Is the website being down due to the usual incompetence we should expect, or is it caused by something else?
Also read:
Load-shedding is coming back with a bang in August
Meikles Hotel’s 5-star bucket bath & the uncomfortable convo about the ZESA power monopoly
Comments
17 responses
Leanard with your level of sarcasm
How could you miss it
They probably didn’t have power at the server end. Lol
😂😂😂power issues at ZPC are never ending
Imported electricity to the site cut and, with nothing to do, the IT staff has gone to look for a company Peugeot 404 that disappeared in the darkness!
😂
They need a private party like South Africa Has, https://loadshedding.com that not owned by the electricity company or the gov.
Learn something from China. News is vetted and approved by the CCP. Journalists can be charged with treason for being inquisitive.
All Zim government internet platforms are used for self-congratulatory press releases only, not for giving information the public really craves.
Are you supporting such a system where shortfalls are hidden and only positive results are published. With our ruling party, we would die from propaganda if we had such a system. Just bear in mind the propaganda that is aired on ZBC just to provide a good facade to the citizenry and the world as whole.
huh we have nothing to learn from the Chinese. chatinoda i democracy and suppression of media is no good homie we all know that.. (it will be propaganda after propaganda)
I think what our government is doin’ kuma internet platforms is ok
China is too much bro. I saw recent footage of them censoring real life! A bridge was partially collapsed in the floods with cars still on it and instead of rescue operations, the first thing emergency services did was block the view so people couldn’t photograph or record the bridge! There’s nothing to learn from a government that will put reputation ahead of lives.
We are not a serious country
Leanard kkkkkk we all know the answer bro . … But hazvitaurwe
1 + 0 = 2
The maths doesn’t work out. Or does it?
Hwange added supply but kariba will/has reduced supply. But we somehow we ended up with more electricity?
So this is what I think happened.
For a start I think we obviously paid cash upfront for guaranteed supply of electricity from either Mozambique or South Africa (it actually might be both.)
Before the Zambezi River Authority makes any public announcement it has to first notify the governments of Zimbabwe nd Zambia well in advance so as not to blindside them. I’m talking about maybe a month or at the very least 3/4 days notice here.
The value of the Zim $ crashed what caused the sudden spike in demand for US$ ? I’m thinking it was caused by the poor credit worthiness of the country and our suppliers demanded cash upfront not IOU’s which might not be honoured.
The blackmarket operates on nearly pure supply and demand principles and the extreme flactuations were definitely caused by someone buying all the US$ they could get with almost no regard for the cost. And the only person/entity capable of doing that might be the government.
So govt after getting advanced notice about the Kariba situation,ran around and made alternative arrangements. And then pretended that all was well without explaining how they pulled off this specific miracle.
And because we have no independent means of tracking the exact situation on ground, we’ll never really know whether or not load shedding has ended.
After all in most cases it’s hard to tell the difference between a power cut and a fault. Worse if these power outages happen with no rhyme or rhythm….
And that’s how you get 1 + 0 = 2
@The Empress, iam impressed by your analysis of the Zesa issue.
Or somply, the folks are just ignoring ŹRA quta. They did it last year. They are not babies who can’t reason that the water they were using last year was way above the quota
yeah you’re right. it just doesn’t add up coz we used to have 2 hrs of domestic power supply per day and sometimes will skip a few days with no power. amd now all of a sudden they just say power has been restored completely. man maths dzacho dzikuramba
If 4+10 =40 it will always difficult to run a whole economy.
I noticed this months ago since I had a bit running. I hope when it comes back it has more data, such as imported power.