Story by Tichaona Kurewa
Power generation at Kariba Hydro-Power Station is expected to increase by 70% after the Zambezi River Authority (ZRA) granted double allocation of water to the power plant.
The Zambezi River Authority Council of Ministers 42nd Ordinary Meeting held last week in Livingstone, Zambia, came up with the decision to allocate a total of 27 billion cubic meters of water for power generation at Kariba Dam next year.
The allocation, which will be shared equally between Zimbabwe and Zambia, is expected to see the Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC) increase electricity generation at Kariba Power Station to 350 megawatts from the current 200 megawatts.
Acting ZPC managing Director, Engineer Nobert Matarutse said, “We are quite excited that we are coming out of a situation where we had low generation at Kariba. We are not going to be where we want to be in 2025, but that improvement is significant. We appreciate it and we will continuously engage with the water authority to see whether there will be a possible revision upwards of the water allocation depending on the inflows that will be coming into Lake Kariba.”
Zimbabwe’s daily peak demand stands at 1 900 megawatts, while the daily average power generation from the country’s major power stations, Hwange and Kariba, is 1 200 megawatts.
The existing gap is filled through imports and other smaller power generation plants across the country.
