Government touts green energy

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ZIMBABWE’S Energy ministry has urged investment in renewable energy saying the country’s current power generation mix between fossils and renewables is not optimal.
Even though generation has continuously increased over the past few years, the global energy mix is still dominated by coal, oil and gas.
Secretary for energy and power development, Gloria Magombo, recently told The Financial Gazette that there was a need for the country to ramp up efforts to develop the clean energy sector.
“Our current energy mix is sitting at almost 50-50 percent renewables, especially when we look at large hydro because we are going to have 2000 Megawatts (MW) of available capacity soon, which is the 600 MW from the new capacity that is coming in,” she said.

In March this year, the southern African nation successfully synchronised Hwange unit-7, which has been going through the technical commissioning and now going through final tests.
Magombo said it would soon be going into full commercial operation.
“We have also successfully brought in unit eight in May, which is now going through the reliability test and will go on until September when it will also declare commercial operation, which means that during this period, we will be having this additional 600 MW.
“There might be a day or two when we are still doing other tests, but it will be available and I think that is already being felt by the Zimbabwe population,” she said.
Zimbabwe gets roughly 70 percent of its power from the Kariba South Hydro Power Station.
The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which is now known as Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, requested the construction of the Kariba Dam from 1955 to 1959 from what was then known as Impregilo, an Italian company that is now known as Webuild. The dam provides 1 626 MW of energy to Zambia and Zimbabwe at its maximum output.
Zambia’s power plant is on the south bank of the dam, while Zimbabwe’s is on the north bank.
“We know that part of the work that we are also doing now is to ensure that Kariba is able to come in and fill in the gaps, especially during the peak periods, while we then go back to the average of about 500 MW to ensure that we don’t finish the water and we are sure that we maintain a sustainable operation of that,” Magombo said.
“We are also seeing a lot of new solar projects for commercial and industrial use. As I speak right now, there are a lot of farmers who have installed solar systems for pumping, especially for irrigation systems,” she added.
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