Government has stepped in to alleviate the power shortages that the country is facing and this has seen load shedding hours being reduced from from 16 hours to 8 hours, Zim Morning Post has learnt.
Energy minister Fortune Chasi confirmed the development but could not shed more light on the dynamics surrounding the cushion.
“I can confirm that we have revisited load shedding schedules but am currently in a meeting will get back to you but all I can say is the improvements are coming from developments at Kariba station” said Chasi.
Kariba Dam is currently producing 900MW against a peak demand of 1800MW instead of a full capacity of 2 260MW.
Permanent Secretary in the Energy ministry Gloria Magombo however revealed on Tuesday that the development was made possible after the treasury added an additional of 200MW through the Day Ahead Market(DAM).
“We are going to be picking up an additional 200MW which has been made available through the support from the Ministry of Finance through the DAM. It’s going to increase as we restore value to ZESA so that we will improve sooner,” she told delegates gathered at a breakfast meeting in Harare Tuesday.
The additional facility will be provided through the provisions of Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) which allows electricity trading between SADC member states and participation in the SAPP market.
The additional power outage that was approved by the Ministry of Finance will however come at a higher cost to improve the power shortage in the country.
“We will want to bring in additional capacity which will be obviously at a higher cost. This is immediate, so it will happen very soon, I can’t give you the date for now, but I think is happening as we speak right now,” said Magombo.
On Tuesday morning, consumers woke up to a revised load shedding schedule much to the surprise of many.
“I was shocked when I left home for work in the morning, electricity was not switched off.
“At first I thought it was a fault because usually they switch us off at 5am,’ said one consumer based in Chitungwiza.
