Zesco plans addition of 45 mega watts to national grid

Zesco plans addition of 45 mega watts to national grid
By Joan Chirwa in Kafue
Monday April 28, 2008 [04:00]

TWO generating units at Kafue Gorge Power Station are next month expected to come online with an additional 45 mega watts (MW) added to the national grid. And Zesco Limited acting managing director Musonda Chibulu said Zambia would soon experience reduced load shedding, as uprating works on the generating machinery at Kafue Gorge Power Station were likely to be completed this December, with an additional 90 MW of power added to the system.

Zesco Limited’s power rehabilitation project at Kafue Gorge has so far cost in excess of US $85 million, and the power utility expects to spend extra amounts of money to bring the machinery to its full efficiency.

During a tour of the power station by chairpersons of parliamentary committees on Saturday, Kafue Gorge station manager Masiye Mwale said rehabilitation and uprating of generation machinery would be completed on schedule.

“We have six generating units at Kafue Gorge Power Station and each machine was at 150 MW. With the uprating works, each machine will have an additional 15 MW, meaning we will have a total of 90 MW added to the national grid when the works are completed by the end of this year,” Mwale said. “Next month, units 3 and 4 will be delivered with 165 MW each while unit 5 will come on line in June.

Everything has been completed on unit 1 but will only be on line in October because the switch gear will be out while unit 2 will undergo recalling and rewinding and will be delivered in December this year. We are actually on schedule with uprating and rehabilitation works.”

Chibulu said Zesco Limited was likely to reduce its power load shedding in December after the expected completion of uprating works at Kafue Gorge power station.

“We are optimistic that load shedding will be minimised after December this year,” Chibulu said. “The deficit in generation of electricity has made us to import extra power needed and we have been getting between 110 MW and 140 MW of power from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) using the 220 KV line through CEC.”

Chibulu said the 220 KV line between Zambia and DRC was not reliable as it went on and off most of the times.

Zesco Limited is also uprating the generation units at Kariba North Bank power station, a move that will see its capacity increased from the current 600 MW to 720 MW.

The completion of the rehabilitation and uprating works on Zesco’s generation equipment would bring the utility’s total capacity to around 1,800 MW, slightly above Zambia’s current demand for electricity.