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Zimbabwe added new 300 MW into the National Grid: Will this ease power woes in the Southern African country?

Simon Tyrus CaineMarch 21, 2023

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Zimbabwe added new 300 MW into the National Grid: Will this ease power woes in the Southern African country?

Zimbabwe is facing an average of 18 hours a day loadshedding, a situation that is affecting businesses, manufacturing industries and the economy at large.

On the 20th of March 2023, the country woke up to the news that 300 MW has been added to the National Grid. At least that is what every citizen wants to hear, but how good is it really considering that national peak demand is around 2200MW?

According to power generation statistics, the country is currently producing a total of 522 MW whereby 323 MW is coming from Hwange Thermal Power Station and the rest from Kariba Power Station. Surely, this is not adequate and there is still much work to be done.

Zimbabwe is expanding its 920 MW Hwange thermal power station by adding two 300 MW units at a cost of $1.4 billion. The 300 MW which was added to the grid yesterday is just one of the two new Units projects (Unit 7 & Unit 8).

It is important to note that this was just a process of synchronization, therefore, ZPC did not say that the 300MW will be fed into the grid immediately. “Power will be progressively fed into the grid until it reaches 300 MW,” ZPC said in a statement. The synchronization process went well to such an extent that 41 MW of electricity were being fed into the grid.

It is expected that by June this year, the process of adding 300 MW of electricity to the national grid from Unit 7 will be completed and that is when the President, Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, will officially commission the project. Unit 8, the second 300MW plant will be live in October.

Despite of the fact that this will not be enough to ease power outages, it is indeed a step into a positive direction. More of these projects will be required to arrest chronic electricity shortages.

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