Drought hits Kariba power

THE Kariba Dam now only has capacity to generate power for the next 165 days, an official has said.

At a tour of the plant, Kariba Power Station general manager, Kenneth Maswera, said water levels in the dam were now 477.15m, which was 1.65m above the power generation level.

“It looks like it has been almost constant, but the water levels is going down and it’s a fact,” he said.

“If we are taking a cubic centimetre a day, it will take 165 days. But that is if we don’t get any water inflows.”

Maswera said the dam had not received significant inflows and the levels would continue going down if there were no water flows into the lake.

He said the water level in Kariba was above power-generation level by 1.65m and if Zimbabwe Power Company went beyond this level, it would not be able to generate, adding that Kariba was created and designed to operate between levels of 475.5m and 488.50m.

Zimbabwe, as well as other countries in eastern and southern Africa, are experiencing an El Nino-induced drought.

The current Kariba Dam levels are the lowest since the 1992 drought.

The rainy season is expected to improve the situation between next month and April.

At the end of last year, Kariba was producing 475MW, but it went down to 285MW at the beginning of this year, and that was expected to plummet further to 250MW.

Presently, generation was still 285MW against a generation capacity of 750MW.

The $533 million (R8 billion) Kariba Power Station expansion programme, expected to be completed by 2018, will add 300MW on the national grid and was now 40% complete. Zimbabwe needs about 2 200MW of power.

The plants and imports were contributing 1 355MW, with Kariba inputting 285MW, Hwange (341MW), Munyati (28MW) and Harare (17MW).

The country imports 300MW of power from South Africa’s power utility, Eskom, between 100MW and 185MW from Mozambique and 100MW from the Democratic Republic of Congo, but Energy and Power Development Minister, Samuel Undenge, said last month such imports were more expensive, and called for a hike in power tariffs.

There was also the Batoka Hydro Station, a power project in the pipeline and to be located 50km downstream of Victoria Falls, which requires $3 billion to construct and if complete, will generate 2 400MW. – African News Agency