Zimbabwe will start receiving 100MW from state-owned utility Zesco early next month under a five-year agreement, while a delegation from Mozambique met this Monday, July 25, in the country to conclude negotiations to supply a further 150 MW to ease ongoing power cuts.
According to Club Mozambique, “the delegation from Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM), which is supplying 50MW to Zesa, was expected in the country for a week-long visit.”
The recent local power deficit has been exacerbated by depressed output at the Hwange and Harare thermal plants, including the loss of a unit producing 125MW at the Kariba Power Station. Zesa has since facilitated the creation of an energy-intensive user group to finance the region’s energy imports.
Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) managing director Howard Choga told Harare Cabinet that power imports were imminent. “We signed power import agreements with Zambia a long time ago, but we had not received electricity from that country because of cash flow challenges. Now, because we have prepaid, we expect this to be resolved in the next few weeks and we will start receiving 100MW from Zambia. We have to prepay them a month before we receive the electricity.” The power import agreement with Zesco is for three to five years.
“Currently, we are receiving 50MW from Cahora Bassa and 50MW from EDM in Mozambique. We had signed a 200MW agreement with EDM, but we were only accessing 50MW. So they are sending a delegation to the country tomorrow (today) and will stay there for the whole week, so we will discuss how we can access the remaining 150MW.”
Zimbabwe Power Company – the power generation arm of Zesa – is currently producing 1201MW at its five power plants, against a demand of 2200MW at the peak of the winter season.
