Martin Kadzere Senior Business Reporter
ZIMBABWE’s electricity imports rose 260 percent last year as the power utility, Zesa Holdings, moved to avert shortages and cuts, which would have crippled business and industrial operations.
Zimbabwe’s commercial power users, including miners, manufacturers and farmers consumed nearly 70 percent of electricity sold last year, according to statistics from Zesa.
The country imported 2 600 gigawatt hours of power up from 626,4 GWh purchased in 2015, the figures availed by the management to the group’s AGM show.
The value of imports increased to $220 million from about $40,6 million a year earlier. Zesa imports power from regional utilities including Hydro Cahorra Bassa of Mozambique and Eskom of South Africa to cover local supply gaps due to limited capacity. Zimbabwe requires an average of 1 400 megawatts against an average generation of 1 000MW.
“There was no load shedding (during the period under review) and the power supply is expected to stabilise into the foreseeable future given the purchase power agreements entered into with Eskom of South Africa and HCB,” read part of the minutes.
Power exports decreased by 61,3 percent from 916,2GWh due to constrained local generation.
The Reserve Bank allocates $5 million per month to Zesa to import electricity but has been failing to fully provide the money due to the prevailing foreign currency shortages.
This has prompted Zesa to engage local exporters, especially mining companies to pay upfront for power supplies to help the power utility partly meet its huge import bill, chief executive Engineer Josh Chifamba told The Herald Business.
“We got $10 million recently from ferrochrome producers and negotiations are ongoing with other exporters,” he said.
Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries president Sifelani Jabangwe said while the imports were not sustainable in the long term, it was “necessary to have a stop gap measure” than to blackout industry.
“With good rains expected next season, we are hopeful that water levels at Kariba Dam will rise adequately to support new generators expected to be commissioned at Kariba power plant in December and this will go a long way in reducing the imports,” he said.
Local generation took a knock in 2015 after the Zambezi River Authority introduced massive water rationing at Kariba Power Station in response to low water levels. The average power output at the most reliable plant fell to an average of 474MW from 690MW.
The new units at Kariba power plant are expected to start delivering 150MW onto the grid in December, with an additional same amount of power expected three months later.
In 2016, electricity sales were 7,318GWh, 2 percent below 7474GWh recorded in 2015 due to depressed capacity utilisation and demand side management impact of prepaid meters.