Repowering plans for Bulawayo Power Station…ZPC to get 20-year licence extension
The Bulawayo Power Station’s licence tenure is set to be extended by 20 years from 2024 after the Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC) applied for its extension as a result of the repowering exercise.
Recently, ZPC announced that it was reviewing a draft contract received from India Export and Import Bank for the $87 million Bulawayo Thermal Power Station repowering project.
The ZPC/India-Exim Bank deal was clinched in 2015 and the financial institution last month announced having extended an additional $23 million line of credit for rehabilitation of Bulawayo Thermal Power Station.
In a public notice yesterday, the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (Zera) said it had received an application from ZPC for amendment of the electricity generation licence GC0023 for the Bulawayo Power Station for generation and supply of electricity in the country.
“The application would entail the extension of the tenure of the generation licence issued to Zimbabwe Power Company for the Bulawayo Power Station by 20 years from 2024.
“The amendment is also necessitated by the need to upgrade the capacity of the power station to 120 megawatts once the repowering programme has been completed,” said Zera.
It is hoped that the respective auxiliaries and balance of plant systems will be refurbished accordingly.
The thermal plant’s refurbishment process includes among other activities; replacing old boilers with state-of- the-art boilers. The power plant, which was built 60 years ago was failing to meet its installed generation capacity of 120 MW due to ageing equipment, among other reasons.
As of yesterday, ZPC indicated on its website that the country was producing a total of 1 145MW from all its power stations with the Bulawayo Thermal Power Station contributing 20MW.
The Government has prioritised power generation through extension of existing power plants such as Kariba Hydro Power Plant and Hwange Thermal Power Station.
The Government has also invited the private sector to participate in electricity generation through the licencing of Independent Power Producers and since 2010, close to 30 IPPs have been registered and their projects are at different stages of development. The Chronicle
