Hwange Unit 7 goes up

Zim Now Writer

The much-talked about Hwange Thermal Power Station Unit 7 went up yesterday evening, in a development expected to bring relief to Zimbabweans who have been enduring punishing hours of load-shedding.

This comes as the country has been battling power deficits occasioned by antiquated equipment at Hwange and low water levels at Kariba Hydro Power Station which compromised generation capacity.

According to sources Unit 7 went up at 1826hours yesterday following successful synchronisation, which was meant to establish if the electricity being generated from the unit would flow into the national grid.

Four engineers were electrocuted at Hwange Power Station in 1984 when they synchronised a system that was not yet ready.

Yesterday’s process was done without any complications and after about 20 minutes of the synchronisation, 41 MW of electricity were being fed into the grid.

It was hoped 100 MW would be fed onto the grid from Unit 7 later on yesterday.

The engineers were going to switch off Unit 7 after about six hours to enable checks on the system, which would take about 12 hours before the Unit would be brought back onto the grid and allowed to generate electricity again.

It is expected that Unit 7’s installed capacity of 300 MW would only be attained by June this year.

Zesa Holdings executive chairman, Sydney Gata, was at the power plant yesterday to witness the synchronisation and said:

“The synchronisation has been successful and I am happy. As ZESA we are proud of this event.

“We can gladly say we have a viable investment here. The rest of the tests can now be concluded while the unit is now generating electricity and soon we shall be enjoying more electricity.

“The plant was well-designed and well-constructed. Today, we have been able to synchronise it with the national grid.

“I pay tribute to the project manager Engineer Forbes Chanakira and a team of nearly 200 young engineers for a job well done,” said Gata.

Unit 8, according to sources, is expected to be completed soon, alleviating the debilitating power shortages Zimbabwe has been going through.