Victoria Falls – ZESA is upbeat the 3 500MW of electricity the country requires by 2025 is achievable as mining and industrial sectors have submitted applications to invest in power generation aggregating to 2 300MW.
The Zimbabwe Energy Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) acting managing director Engineer Howard Choga said this in an interview on the sidelines of the CEO Africa Annual Roundtable in Victoria Falls last week.
At present, Zimbabwe electricity consumption is at 1 850MW while under the National Development Strategy I (NDS I) the country requires 3 500MW by 2025.
NDS I is the Government’s five-year economic blueprint anchoring the economy between 2021 and 2025 and it spells out policies aimed at transforming Zimbabwe into an upper-middle-income economy by 2030.
To achieve Zimbabwe’s aspirations of the national vision, a total of 11 000MW would be required by 2030.
In support of national economic programmes under NDS I, Zesa through its subsidiary, ZETDC has committed to ensuring the country has the required 3 500MW by 2025.
“The current consumption is at 1 850MW and in the mining and industrial sectors we have applications that are aggregating to 2 300MW.
“Applications continue coming and we are approving and people start investing. We believe we will be up to the task in terms of providing electricity.
“Of course the rope that we have to walk is tight, but there are possibilities that we will be able to achieve if all the requirements in the environment remain favourable,” said Eng Choga.
He said the targeted electricity requirement is a function of consumers paying the correct amount of the tariff as well as the ability to proceed with the proposed investments.
“But what I can tell you is that we have got applications that we have approved and we believe we will be up to the task.
“The strategies thereof, one of which is investing outside of Zimbabwe in terms of power generation capacity; we also have solar that we are running with up to 800MW but at the moment we have got 500MW which we believe should be connected within the next 12 to 18 months,” said Eng Choga.
He added ZETDC has restructured the markets in terms of fully corporatizing the intensive energy user group —a grouping of companies with high demand for electricity and the power utility is trying to ensure such consumers would be able to import electricity on their own.
“When they import, they take two risks away from the electricity market —one is the risk of payment where sometimes you are not able to pay because of the tariff structure issues. The other one is capacity risk where if they are going to import on their own whatever we have, will remain for the remainder of the customers.
“We intend to utilise these opportunities to ensure that we actually glide towards being able to avail the 2 350MW by end of 2025,” said Eng Choga.
Meanwhile, the energy regulator, the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (ZERA) gave ZETDC the greenlight to charge exporters in foreign currency for electricity supplies and announced a separate tariff for other foreign currency earners
With the new tariff structure, exporting customers now pay an average tariff of USc12,21/KWh while that of other foreign currency earners has been pegged at USc10,63/kWh.
The power utility has also increased the local dollar tariff component for ordinary consumers effective October 14, 2022.
The increases for exporting customers such as mining and manufacturing companies and foreign currency earners are effective October 1, 2022. However, exporting firms through the industrial lobby group, the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI), have raised objections to the latest tariff structure. – The Herald
