Jonathan Maphenduka

THE Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) has announced an ambitious $500 million solar power project for the country to complement Kariba and Hwange plants by 2022.

The project, to be financed with private capital, will see solar plants built across the country.

The project is expected to narrow by a whopping 500 megawatts (MW) in imported energy and work towards stabilising supply to the consumer. Zesa is currently identifying suitable sites for the project.

Speaking in Victoria Falls recently, Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) Systems Manager Ikuphuleng Dube also revealed that Zesa was taking a new look at the stalled Batoka Gorge Hydropower project which was abandoned in 1992 when the then
Zambian President Frederick Chiluba pulled Zambia out of the project, citing financial constraints.

Dube also announced that a new regional power project was on the drawing board for Devil’s Gorge which is believed to be on the Zambezi River system.

With the projected solar project, Zimbabwe now joins Zambia which is already using solar power for street lights in Zambian capital Lusaka which is generated from the sprawling Lusaka South industrial park.

Zimbabwe is running many years behind other countries in the region in its development of generation capacity to meet its domestic needs. It therefore has for many years relied on imported power. The country has also been known to resort to re-exporting imported power to earn foreign curreny, a tenuous and embarrassing necessity.

The Zesa solar project becomes the first major project of its kind in the country to involve private investors. Years ago Rio Tinto proposed to enter the energy sector which would have been based on the Sengwa Coal Mine near Gokwe. The proposal was however rejected by government. Years earlier a Scandinavian firm exhibiting at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) had offered to build a solar collector the size of a football pitch in Binga but the proposal was rejected by government on the ground that solar power was still largely an experimental commodity.

The solar power collector, the proponents said, would be capable of uplifting water over the Zambezi escarpment for irrigation in the Kariangwe flats of the district for the benefit of local people.

The latest announcement of the solar project comes amid growing public complaints regarding the utility’s failure to satisfy consumer demand for electricity for domestic, industrial and agricultural purposes amid uncontrollable vandalism of the utility’s network which is blamed on laxity by the management.

While the power authority is quick to bemoan the claim that it is owed over $2 billion by consumers, the authority will not make a public admission that whatever money is owed, the money is being collected from every consumer, not necessarily and solely from consumers who owe the utility the money. This means that those consumers who owe Zesa or its division are being subsidised by other consumers.

It is also true that the distribution division charges more money for any purchases after the end-of-the month.

Informed sources say there are moves currently to demolish the cooling infrastructure of the Bulawayo Thermal Power Station. The power station sits on prime land which, it is said, the utility wants to sell to pay off the Bulawayo City Council for the value of the power station which was taken over without paying for it.

Zesa is believed to have approached the Ministry of Local government for permission to sell part of the land in the power station complex. Unconfirmed reports said the Mayor of Bulawayo has told government that the land must remain an asset of the council.

Town Clerk Mr Christopher Dube yesterday revealed that the matter is now before the courts but declined to comment. “I can’t comment on a matter which is now before the courts”, he said.

The thermal power station was taken over by the power utility in 1987, under a law which remains unspecified, without Zesa paying for it. The matter has been a subject controversy for many years now. Zesa is reported to be offering the council no more than US$3 million.

The power station was built in 1947 for an unknown capital outlay.