South Africa supplying Zimbabwe 170 MW of power despite challenges to ESKOM

South Africa is supplying Zimbabwe with 170 megawatts of power because of its contractual obligations despite the power situation in that country, Zimbabwe Energy Minister Zhemu Soda told Parliament today.

He was responding to a question from former Energy Minister Fortune Chasi who wanted to know how much power Zimbabwe was getting from South Africa since ESKOM was basically on its knees.

“We are getting a capacity of around 170 megawatts from SA and the contract still subsists despite the power supply situation that is in SA but we are still able to obtain power supply from SA,” Soda replied.

“As for the mitigation measures that the Government of Zimbabwe has put in place in the event that SA one day gets to a situation where they will not be able to give us power supply, Madam Speaker Maam, you might be aware that we embarked on the expansion of Hwange Power Station in 2018 with the intention of obtaining additional power supply of around 600 megawatts from Unit 7 and 8.  

“Last week alone, in this House, I indicated the readiness of Unit 7 from which we will be getting 300 mega watts before end of this month and another unit will be following after a month to give us a total of 600 megawatts being fed into the grid. 

“We also have plans to rehabilitate the existing units at Hwange Power Station, that is, Units 1 to 6 to get the units back to the installed capacity of 920 mega watts.  As we speak today, there is a generation of 387 mega watts which are coming from Hwange Power Station.  

“The intention is to rehabilitate the power station to give us 920 megawatts among other initiatives including the participation of the private sector as independent power producers.  Even if we are caught up with what is happening in SA may be in a month or two, we are hoping that the capacity will be replaced with our internally generated power which we will get from the expansion project in Hwange.”

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