Hydro plant will prevent blackouts

Zambian president Rupiah Banda has commissioned the Kafue Gorge Lower (KGL) hydroelectric project for the construction of a third power station on the Kafue River, the largest tributary of the Zambezi.

Zambia's largest power station, Kafue Gorge, is also on this river.

The Indian multinational, Tata, in conjunction with the state electricity monopoly, Zesco, is constructing a second plant at Itezhi-tezhi on the same river.

The KGL, which is due for completion in 2017, will have significance beyond Zambia.

The planned output of up to 750 megawatts (MW) - although the International Finance Corporation has recommended a reduction to 600MW for environmental reasons - will end the "creeping" power shortage in Zambia.

That, together with a 120MW power station which Tata is constructing, the planned 300MW thermal plant, another hydro plant getting under way in the north-west and the increased output from existing generation plants due to upgrading, will not only take care of Zambia's requirements in the medium term, but will turn the country into a net exporter of power.

The estimated project cost for KGL is a whopping $2-billion and it will be built as a public/private partnership project of Zesco, the China-Africa Development Fund and the Sino Hydro Corporation of China.

It will be financed largely by the China Africa Development Fund, which is in the process of setting up an office in Lusaka. The commissioning on July 20 was attended by the new Chinese ambassador to Zambia, Zhou Yu Xiao, who pledged to step up Chinese investment in Zambia.

Banda described the KGL as one of the most important components of Zambia's strategy to meet the growing energy demand in the country and the region.

The power situation has deteriorated, with several poorly explained countrywide outages.

These blackouts ultimately assumed a political significance as Zambia had had a stable supply since the early 1970s - and the outages were seen as largely the failures of post-Kenneth Kaunda governments.

Investment in hydro power was done by the post-independence government and it was driven mainly by the need to keep the mines supplied.

Supply has greatly stabilised since the worst period of rolling blackouts around 2008.

Zambia is said to be a victim of its own success. The rapid increase in industrial activity, particularly mining, is blamed for the rapid increase in the demand for power. But there were other reasons. A key problem was that investment in sub-transmission and distribution had failed to keep up with demand and the system suffered from inadequate maintenance and a scarcity of skilled manpower.

A series of breakdowns and supply problems have further reduced the reliability of supply and curbed service expansion thus seriously constraining economic growth.

Zambia is now getting to grips with these issues. The country's hydropower resource potential is estimated at 6000MW but there is an installed capacity of only around 1631MW, mainly managed by Zesco. The mines have long been the country's biggest bulk consumers. With only 22% of the population having access to electricity in recent years, Zambia has stepped up the rural electrification programme significantly.

Total demand is currently estimated at about 1200MW. Against an installed capacity of 1631MW, there has always been 431MW of surplus capacity.

This excess power has usually been exported within the region.

However, since the beginning of rehabilitation and uprating of generators at the main power stations, the surplus has been greatly reduced, necessitating intermittent imports of power, mainly from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The largest power station is Kafue Gorge, whose construction was completed in 1972 with an installed capacity of 900MW with six machines of 150MW each.

The oldest is the Victoria Falls power station on the Zambezi, which dates back to 1936 with an installed capacity of 108MW.

There are four small hydro stations with a combined capacity of 23.75MW. Generally, the small hydro stations do not have sufficient water storage capacity to operate through the dry season. Kariba North Bank power station, with an installed capacity of 600MW and whose extension is under way, is located on the Zambian bank of Lake Kariba and is the second largest.

The World Bank has financed a power rehabilitation project for a number of years that supports institutional and regulatory reforms in the power sector.

These include:

• Optimal long-term development through the establishment of an enabling institutional and regulatory environment for private sector participation in electricity supply.
• The short-term commercialisation of the national power utility, Zesco, through enhanced resource mobilisation and corporate autonomy, improved efficiency and pricing and improving supply through strengthening interconnection with the DRC.

Most of these reforms are under way. What the country has not done in many years is build a brand new power station with a significant output, and that is what the KGL project is all about.