Staff Reporter

The Hwange Thermal Power Station will be complete by November 2022, a development that will result in improved supply of electricity across the country.

Addressing delegates to the inaugural Africa Infrastructure and Construction Conference session on upstream and downstream business opportunities in Bulawayo, Zesa Holdings consultant for power project’s development, Engineer Tanda Chidi said the station was now close to completion.

“The project is essentially almost complete. We are sitting at 94.6 percent overall. On design, engineering together with procurement of materials, we are at 99.5 percent and construction is at 87.4 percent,” he said.

“So, we are confident that by end on November, commissioning of Unit 7 will be done and Unit 8 in March next year,” he said.

Mr Chisi also mentioned that the Hwange Thermal Power Station was going to be a major step in the attainment of the nation’s vision 2030. The station is set to settle some of the Southern African county’s power problems.

“The major expansion of the Hwange Thermal Power Station by the addition of units 7 and 8, each of 300MW, would help to alleviate some of the Southern African country’s power problems,” he said

He also mentioned that the first new unit was expected to have been completed this month while the other was expected to be supplying the grid next year in January, but the COVID-19 outbreak affected progress

“Zimbabwe has sufficient internal transmission capability to move electricity, adding that the Hwange expansion project was progressing well despite earlier implementation challenges related to Covid-19 procurement delays, which delayed the first new unit by a month and the second one by approximately 2 months,” he said

The $1.5 billion project will see the installation of two giant boiler-turbine-generator sets with a combined capacity of 600MW. In addition, the necessary extensions to the cooling towers and other civil and electrical engineering works form part of the upgrade.