BBC / Kennedy Gondwe
Kariba Dam was built in a gorge between Zambia and Zimbabwe to dam the Zambezi River and form an artificial lake.
Despite being home to the mighty Zambezi River and the massive hydroelectric Kariba Dam, Zambia is currently facing its worst power outage in living memory.
The crisis is so severe that cities and towns across the country are without power, sometimes for three days in a row, and people consider themselves lucky if they have electricity for an hour or two.
The power outage was a shock to 43% of Zambians who are connected to the grid and have accepted electricity for granted their whole lives.
However, Zambia’s power generation capacity has been decimated by the most severe El Niño drought in decades.
Nowadays, sometimes when I go to a bar or restaurant, people aren’t eating or drinking, they’re just there to charge their phones over the thumping noise of generators.
Businesses that make money by charging the phones of people without electricity are also booming.
Zambia gets up to 84% of its electricity from reservoirs such as lakes and rivers, but only 13% comes from coal.
The contribution from solar, diesel and heavy oil is even lower at 3%.
EPA
Drought described as ‘catastrophic’ by government ministers
The crisis has worsened as the country’s only coal-fired power plant, Maamba Energy, has not been operating at maximum capacity for several weeks due to routine maintenance work.
There was finally good news on Wednesday when Energy Minister Makozo Chikote said the power plant was fully operational and Zambians would have access to electricity for at least three hours a day.
President Hakainde Hichilema declared the drought a national disaster in February, but the government has been unable to resolve the energy crisis as Zambia relies heavily on the Kariba dam for electricity.
The financial crisis has also severely limited the government’s ability to import electricity as suppliers prefer to pay upfront, Matongo Maumbi, a spokesperson for state power company Zesco, told the BBC’s Focus on Africa podcast. He said electricity was imported from Mozambique and South Africa. Mitigating the crisis, particularly in the mining industry, which is Zambia’s main export earner and source of foreign exchange.
Located on the Zambezi River, Africa’s fourth longest river, Kariba was built in the 1950s and is the reservoir for the Kariba Northbank Power Station, the country’s largest underground power station. The power plant on the opposite shore supplies Zimbabwe.
However, only one of the six turbines at the Zambian power plant is operational due to the drought, which has dried up parts of the river, resulting in the 1,080 MW installed at Kariba being cut short. It remains at only 7%.
The dam stores water from the Zambezi River with curved walls that are 128 meters (420 feet) high, 579 meters (1,900 feet) long, and 21 meters (69 feet) thick.
Cephas Museba, an engineer who has worked at Zesco for 19 years, says he has never seen water levels in Kariba this low.
BBC / Kennedy Gondwe
Kariba Dam is one of the largest dams in the world
“I think we’re out of rain as early as February. It looks like we’ll have rain until April. If you compare the history of this basin, this is the lowest we’ve received,” he told me. said.
This has caused a power crisis that is being felt in every business and home.
Some companies have shortened business hours and cut employees.
Even finding bread can be difficult. Bakeries are making less bread because it’s too expensive to keep generators running.
Fortunately, the government has installed huge generators in some markets, government offices and hospitals, but stories of how kidney patients are struggling to cope are still being shared on social media. Masu.
Some patients must be connected to a dialysis machine for up to three hours a day, but electricity is only restored for about one to two hours, sometimes well after midnight.
Other times, there may be no power at all for 72 hours straight.
On those days, I wear the same clothes I wore the day before, instead of a wrinkled shirt that has been washed but not ironed.
Life has become more difficult for everyone.
One day recently, I woke up to a strange smell that sounded like blood coming from under the refrigerator.
All the meat we bought was gone so we recently had to give it to our German Shepherd dog, who is the happiest dog in our family.
BBC / Kennedy Gondwe
Kennedy’s dog is the only beneficiary of the power crisis
I bought some relish at the supermarket the other day, and when I opened the package at dinner, I realized it was dog food.
My food budget, already tight due to the cost of living crisis, has become even tighter. There’s nothing wrong with buying fresh food in bulk at a cheap price because it will just spoil.
The government is encouraging households and businesses to switch to solar power, and has abolished import taxes on solar power equipment to make it cheaper to purchase.
However, some people find that their solar panels don’t produce enough electricity when there’s not enough sunlight, and they can’t afford to install more panels. Most Zambians cannot afford solar panels.
Many households now use portable gas stoves to cook and boil water, but due to high demand, even stores are running out of gas.
So, out of desperation and because it’s cheaper, they buy charcoal for cooking and boiling water, despite its negative impact on the environment and climate.
The power crisis also affected wells dug on property by middle-class families.
Wells are powered by electricity and solar-powered pumps, so households now have no regular water supply, making it impossible to even flush toilets.
Some schools are now encouraging children to drink 5 liters of water each day to reduce the possibility of a sanitary crisis and to reduce the incidence of waterborne diseases such as cholera, which hit the country earlier this year. There is.
Many families are now filling buckets, or bathtubs, with the hope that the water will last until the lights come back on and the toilets can flush.
All of this has left Zambians frustrated and angry. They say the power outage highlights the failure of successive governments to plan ahead, something President Hichilema’s administration has now promised to do.
Maumbi said Zesco is investing in more energy sources, including solar power, so its dependence on hydropower will drop to about 60%.
However, Zambia is not only focused on green energy, but also on coal.
In July, the energy regulator approved plans to build only the country’s second coal-fired power plant.
It is the dirtiest fossil fuel and produces the most greenhouse gases when burned, but governments feel they have little choice but to move forward to avoid similar crises in the future.
You may also be interested in:
Getty Images/BBC
Source link
