Zambia resumes night power exports despite deficit

Tag : Used Mining Equipment

Rhodnie Sisala, the managing director of State power utility Zesco,also said the government had given the firm $49-million to speed uprehabilitation works at two major power stations.
The cash injection was made in a bid to provide adequate power tofour new mining units and other industries.
Sisala said Zesco had reconnected to the Zambia-Zimbabweinterconnector, used to export power to Botswana, Namibia andLesotho via South Africa, and which is also used to at times importelectricity from Mozambique and South Africa.
Like many countries in the region, Zambia faces power deficitsduring peak demand but has surplus power to export at night whenmost copper mines and industry reduce their demand.
Sisala said Zambian authorities allowed Zesco to reconnect to theinterconnector after reaching an agreement with other members ofthe Southern Africa Power Pool (SAPP), which comprises SouthAfrica, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zambia andZimbabwe.
Mineral-rich Zambia disconnected itself from the interconnector inJanuary after three power outages damaged electrical equipment atits vast copper mines, forcing producers to trim output, andplunging the country into total darkness.
"Most of the technical issues which led to the (disconnectionfrom) the interconnector have now been addressed by the partiesinvolved," Sisala told a news conference.
Zesco would from Wednesday export between 200 MW to 300 MW ofpower, between 2000 GMT in the evenings to 0500 GMT, to southernAfrican countries in need of additional power, because Zambia'stotal demand slumps during that period.
POWER TRADE
"This means electricity trade between SAPP members can nowresume. For Zambia, this will give the country a more stable systembecause of support that other countries are able to give in case ofproblems," Sisala said.
Sisala said Zambia was importing 30 MW of power from the DRC tofill a 150 MW gap of the power required for the copper mines.
Sisala said Zesco would use the $49 million from the Treasury torehabilitate equipment at the Kafue Gorge hydropower station andupgrade generation capacity to 720 MW from its current 600 MW.
Infrastructure at the Kariba North Bank hydropower station wouldalso be upgraded to produce 990 MW from 900 MW, he said.
This would be enough power to provide 120 MW to the new Lumwanacopper mine, a unit of Australia's Equinox Minerals Ltd., 120-130MW to the Konkola Deep Mining Project, which is due to startproducing 300 000 tonnes of copper in 2009.
Sisala said the Munali nickel mine, a unit of Australia's AlbidonLtd., which started producing nickel concentrate last week wouldneed 50 MW when it reaches peak production while another 80 MWwould be distributed to a Chinese-run smelter, a new cement plantand a steel plant.
Copper mining is the country's economic lifeblood and the vastcopper mines are a major employer in this southern African countryof 12 million people.