Zimbabwe Wants To Increase Rooftop Solar Adoption & Start Floating Solar PV Projects In Bid To Address Critical Electricity Generation Shortfall

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Zimbabwe has been facing an electricity generation shortfall for over a decade now. The electricity generation crisis is a result of depressed generation at the country’s main power stations. The country has some aging coal power stations at the Hwange Power plant (920 MW from Units 1 to 6) that are at various stages of being revamped. The output from these plants has been well below the installed capacity for a while now. Zimbabwe also had over 200 MW of installed capacity from the old small thermal power plants in Harare, Munyati, and Bulawayo, but these appear to have been decommissioned, as they were also struggling. The other generation constraint comes from the 1,050 MW Kariba hydropower station, where generation has been curtailed to a maximum of 300 MW of late due to low water levels in the Kariba dam as a result of lower than normal rainfall over the last couple of years.

Although Zimbabwe recently commissioned two new coal power plant capacity at Hwange of 300 MW each (Unit 7 & 8), the overall contribution for all the major generation plants hovers at around 1,300 MW most of the time. This is well below the nation’s demand. Peak demand is close to 2,000 MW. However, several new mining projects have come online or are planned by miners in Zimbabwe. Some of these mines are for critical minerals such as lithium. A new steel plant estimated to consume about 500 MW on its own is also almost ready. All of this means that Zimbabwe will need to find as much new electricity capacity as it can get as fast as possible to alleviate the critical shortages that have resulted in the utility company implementing an electricity rationing programme (loadshedding).

In a bid to get some generation capacity online ASAP, the country is looking to accelerate the adoption of solar PV. This week the country’s electricity transmission and distribution company (ZETDC), which is also the largest retailer of electricity, called for homes and business to install more rooftop solar and feed any excess generation into the grid under the net metering programme. ZETDC says at the moment, homes and businesses are contributing about 20 MW in total to the grid from installations that have signed up for the net-metering programme. ZETDC added that there is a desire to see this contribution from homes and businesses increasing to 100 MW very quickly and called for more homes and business to join the net metering programme.

The country is also targeting floating solar PV at Kariba Dam to help alleviate the generation shortfall. We covered the initial proposal last year. China Energy Engineering Group had proposed to construct a 1,200 MW DC floating solar PV (FPV) plant on Lake Kariba to help alleviate Zimbabwe’s unprecedented electricity crisis. The proposed 1,000 MW AC (1,200 MW DC) FPV for Kariba Dam will use 1,832,069 PV panels covering 25 km². These will be 655 Wp mono crystalline bifacial dual glass modules. This will be for a 25-year period. The initial estimated annual production is 2,640 GWh. The total project price is estimated to be around $987 million. China Energy Engineering Group Co. Ltd (China Energy) says it has done several projects in China, including 250 MW, 200 MW, 100 MW, 150 MW, and 130 MW floating PV plants from 2017 to December 2022.

In a recent announcement, the Zimbabwe government announced that after a grid impact study, a 600 MW floating solar plant has now been approved. This is half of the initial proposed 1.2 GW DC FPV plant design. The first phase will be a 150 MW FPV plant to be completed next year, with two additional phases of (300MW and 150MW) to be added in 2026 and 2027. It’s great to see that solar PV is actively being encouraged to help diversify Zimbabwe’s electricity generation mix as well as increasing the penetration of renewables.

Image by toubibe from Pixabay

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