Fault At Hwange Power Station – ZESA Outages To Be Worse

The electricity situation seems to be getting worse by the day and efforts to turn the situation around are also being hampered by the fact that Hwange Power Station breaks down every other week causing longer periods of darkness.

Due to a technical fault at Hwange Power Station, local generation is now depressed, & load shedding is now being implemented at Stage 2. Customers will be advised on restoration progress. Load shedding is now being implemented outside the published schedule.@fortunechasi

— ZETDC (@ZetdcOfficial) June 25, 2019

ZETDC took to their Twitter to announce another fault that will result in longer load shedding hours.

ZESA’s spokesperson, Mr Fullard Gwasira gave more details regarding the failure of equipment at Hwange:

It’s [the faults at Hwange] indeed typical of aged plant which fails frequently. But that doesn’t provide much relief unfortunately.

[To rectify] We basically need new investment in new plants. Life extension doesn’t provide relief for very long.

Mr Gwasira also said in order to rectify the situation, there needs to be investment in the power sector:

Well in the short term the availability of forex to import power will suffice to cover deficit. Medium term Kariba and Hwange. Long term? We need new investment in the power sector.

It’s not clear whether the US$10 million that was reported to have been paid to Eskom last week will impact the current electricity as it seems to be worsening rather than improving.