ZESA Holdings subsidiary, Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC), says it is only generating 951 megawatts (MW) of electricity against a national peak demand of 2 200MW, which has resulted in the country experiencing electricity blackouts of up to 18 hours per day in some areas.
Despite the successful synchronisation of Hwange Unit 7 on Monday into the national grid, ZETDC call centre supervisor Milton Zata said they were still facing challenges.
“Unfortunately, we have national grid challenges, resulting in these long outages,” Zata tweeted.
The blackouts are seriously affecting business and industries countrywide.
With Hwange Unit 7 appearing to struggle to feed the envisaged 300MW into the national grid following its upgrade, the power crisis is set to persist as Hwange’s Unit 8 is only expected to go live in October with another 300MW.
