PREPARE FOR THE WORST- ZESCO
By Kombe Chimpinde Mataka
WE’RE resorting to extreme measures to ensure we protect the integrity of the equipment at least as we pray that the water levels will stabilise very soon,” says Zesco board chairman Vickson Ncube.
In an interview, Ncube, currently in South Africa, said Zambians ought to
prepare themselves for the worst.
Ncube urged Zambians, who he said, were the owners of Zesco to try and bear with the situation.
“The water levels are just out of control. The point is anything else can jeopardise the generators to a point where you can end up damaging them because remember, they cannot suck water below a certain level
otherwise they will suck air which will kill them. What is happening is we are resorting to extreme measures to ensure that we protect the integrity of the equipment at least as we pray that the water levels will stabilise very soon. But as for now, we must prepare ourselves for the worst,” said Ncube. “The immediate thing that needs to be done is to reduce drastically the hours of generation. And remember even when we try to leverage on the other power stations, we push them to high also. They get overstretched. When you have all these power stations, they supplement each other so that none is overstretched. We are not only looking at
Kariba (North Bank Station) and its challenges, we also looking at the rest of the generation equipment to ensure we don’t over use them to a point where we can damage them and where they will require years to repair. We are asking ourselves, the Zambians, as owners of Zesco that we
bear with each other in these moments of difficulties but we are doing everything possible to ensure that the matter is mitigated.”
On Wednesday, Zesco announced an indefinite 12-hour load shedding schedule.
“The corporation’s ability to meet power demand remains constrained by the drastic reduction in available water in the Kariba reservoir for the electricity generation at Kariba North Bank Power Station. At present, the power station’s generating capacity has been reduced from its installed 1080MW to below 400MW. Further, the 150MW generator outage at Maamba Collieries Limited Power Plant for routine annual maintenance from 4 January 2023 has exacerbated the situation,” stated Zesco.
