Zimbabwe power shortages likely to ease from tomorrow when Unit 7 is brought back to the grid

We also have another facility which we call net mistering facility where any investor, including households that have potential to produce electricity from their solar systems mounted on their roof tops. Those that are producing in excess of what they require, there is not a facility to sell the excess to the grid.  We are coming up with all these innovations in order to improve supply of electricity to the grid.  The advantages of enrolling on the net metering facilities, you will not tax yourself to procure storage facilities. When you are generating your electricity you will be banking or you are supplying power into the grid and at a time when you will require to use your power that you would have send into the grid, you can always have access to that and you do not require immediately to pay or to procure equipment for storage.  That is one of the advantages. 

Also, for equipment or projects that are below a threshold of 5 megawatts, you will not go through the rigorous process of licencing that ZERA normally requires.  So, there is a lot that Government is doing to assist the independent power producers to come and develop their projects in the country in terms of incentives that are being offered and also we continue to engage with them to understand if they are having any challenges so that the Government makes an intervention with regards to those problems or challenges that they may be facing.

We are also involved as Government in many other projects to try to alleviate the challenge of power shortages in the country apart from the involvement of the independent power producers.  You might be aware that after unit 8, that ZESA is currently working on, they shall be proceeding to do a rehabilitation of the existing power station to give it a new life with the hope that it will be brought back to the installed capacity of 920 megawatts.  There are a lot of interventions including our participation on the Batoka which is also on course and also our involvement in Mozambique through the Mphanda Nkuwa project which is currently being considered.  So, there are a lot of interventions that the Government is making with the hope that we will have adequate power supply and again to ensure that the economy continues to move. I thank you Mr. President.

HON. SEN. CHIEF MAKUMBE: Thank you Mr. President, I want to appreciate the response that has been given to me by the Hon. Minister. Suffice to ask this other question and say are there any timelines as to when we can expect these IPPs or grid soon? The market has so many IPPs who have been licenced but when are they coming on board to give us power as a country?  We need power. Are there any indications as to when we are going to have power from these so called IPPs?

HON. SODA:  Thank you Mr. President.  By their nature, the IPPs are private sector investments and I would not want to be tempted to give the timelines as to when these private sector investments will be available. What we have done that and what we are doing is, like I earlier on indicated, to continue to engage with them and listen to them in case there are challenges that we might as Government attend to.  I am aware that we have a register that gives a number of between 80 to 90 licenced investments by the independent power producers. 

In the past, it has been an issue of incentives which they required but with the promulgation of the policy which I have just explained, we provided some incentives and we have also dealt with one of their risks being the inability by the power utility to meet the financial obligations at a time when these projects would have been development and they are selling the power to the power utility.  That has been dealt with through the Government implementation agreement. We will continue as Government to review the licences, those that would have failed to develop their projects within the given timelines, the licences will be scrapped so that we also free the substations.  Whenever a project is licenced, there is a grid impact study which is conducted to ascertain whether the power that will be generated from a project can be accepted by the nearest substation which will be nearer to the project.  In many instances, the projects are developing only up to some stages,  like up to a stage of obtaining a licence and nothing then happens thereafter.

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