- Bloomberg reports that Zambia’s state-owned power utility warned it may cease generating electricity at the Kariba dam by October because the nation’s worst drought yet is depleting water levels at the world’s largest artificial reservoir.
- Kariba Dam water allocation for electricity generation cut by almost half in 2024.
Zesco Ltd. is “working frantically” to avoid a shutdown at the Kariba complex, Managing Director Victor Mapani said Thursday. Hydropower makes up about 85% of Zambia’s generation capacity, and consumers already endure power cuts lasting more than 12 hours daily. “We are not sleeping,” Mapani said at a briefing broadcast on state-owned ZNBC TV. But “running into October, we’re going to get the Kariba outage.”
The dam falls under the management of the Zambezi River Authority, a corporation jointly and equally owned by the governments of Zambia and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has a power station on the north bank (1050MW) while Zambia’s is on the south bank of the dam (1080MW). Last year, Zimbabwe used more than its water quota for electricity generation and ignored the Zambezi River Authority’s regulatory requirements to the detriment of Zambia. Read more
This general outlook is highly influenced by the increasing occurrence of El Niño weather conditions, which are expected to significantly impact negatively, the rainfall season in Southern Africa. The 2024 rainfall profile outlook implies a high likelihood of below-normal Zambezi River inflows into Lake Kariba.
Desperate measures
ZESCO has launched a Net Metering Program, set to begin this month, designed to promote the adoption of renewable energy sources amongst existing customers, allowing them to generate their own electricity and feed any excess power back into the grid. ZESCO also recently announced a new power rationing schedule starting July 15, 2024.
Zambia has an installed generation capacity of 3 777 MW with a peak demand of 2 400 MW. The country is importing 410 MW and has negotiated an additional 218 MW to start rolling-in this month according to Bloomberg.
In a bizarre twist of events, Ivanhoe copper mine in DRC recently announced that it is importing power from Zambia. Read more
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
