Zimbabwe captive power: Harare targets 1,500MW as Kariba’s water is cut for 2027

Zimbabwe’s energy minister, July Moyo, wants to bring part of the country’s captive power, which the government puts at about 1,500MW, onto the national grid, after the Zambezi River Authority cut Kariba’s water allocation for power generation in 2027 to 23 billion cubic metres from 36 billion this year.

Private generators in Zimbabwe, led by mining companies, produce about 1,500MW of captive power by the government’s count, and Moyo said on 8 October that taking “some of that captive power into the national grid” would let the country “go through this super El Niño without putting true pressure on the industries that will need to continue to power the growth of the economy”.

The Zambezi River Authority has allocated 23 billion cubic metres of Kariba’s water for power generation in 2027, split equally between the Zimbabwe Power Company and Zambia’s ZESCO, against 36 billion this year, and its acting chief executive, Peter Kapinga, said the allocation “is based on forecasts of strong El Niño conditions and below-normal rainfall”. Lake Kariba held 23.77 billion cubic metres of usable water on 14 October, 36.68% of capacity, against 12.75% on the same date last year.

On the lake itself, Zimbabwe’s Cabinet has approved the US$650 million, 600MW floating solar plant that GreenGrid Energy, formerly Sunspire, is developing with ZETDC as the sole buyer of its power, and Anxious Masuka, the minister who presented it to Cabinet, said that “the Project is now preparing for the implementation phase”. No financiers have been named for the plant, which Masuka said would provide power for 3 million people at full capacity.

Moyo made his remarks on captive power at Selous, where Centrachine, a subsidiary of African Transmission Corporation, signed a direct agreement for a 115MW solar plant whose commissioning is scheduled for October 2027, according to The Herald, and he asked the partners to bring it forward to July.

Enumerators from ZESA Holdings are visiting households in suburbs of every density across the country through October and November for a Domestic Energy Survey and Load Profiling Study, recording how homes use energy and how many have installed their own solar systems, to inform how the utility plans and runs its distribution network.