Government is targeting to have power surplus by 2018 as a result of several power projects that are being implemented in different parts of the country, an official has said. The director for Policy and Planning in the Ministry of Energy and Power Development Mr Benson Munyaradzi said they don’t anticipate any shortages up to 2018 since some of the projects are almost complete.
“Going forward we don’t anticipate power shortages up to 2018 due to a number of power projects which we are carrying out. We are actually going to have a surplus of power.
“Government has put in place long term and short term measures targeted at increasing power generation in the country.
“The short term measures include the use of diesel generators such as the project that we are going to open at Dema in two weeks, which is expected to produce 100 megawatts for the grid,” he said.
He added that while there are efforts to increase power generation, power demand had declined from a peak of 2 200 megawatts in 1996 to between 1300 to 1500 megawatts currently due to efficient use of power by stakeholders.
“There is a decline in demand for power especially among major consumers in the mining, agricultural and manufacturing sector.
“We have to revise our demand projections on the medium term up to 2018 by 200 megawatts,” he said.
He also said that Government has registered a number of power companies that have capacity to produce up to 4 000 megawatts, if they get the necessary funding.
“So if there are people who want to invest in the country they should not be worried about the availability of power, it will be available unless something dramatic happens.
“The Kariba expansion project is now at 45 percent complete and the first unit is going to be commissioned in 2018 we are on schedule and after completion we will get 300 megawatts extra from Kariba,” he said.
“As a ministry we have some policy interventions that we are making that are linked to Sustainable Development Goals mainly focusing on power. We have started working on the SDG targets through a UN project called sustainable energy for all and we are creating the action agenda is expected to be completed in 2018.
“We have also developed the bio-fuels policy, which is now awaiting Cabinet approval and we are also working on the Independent Power Producers policy just to mention a few,” he added. BH24