29 April 2008
Ndola — TWO generators at Kafue Gorge power station have broken down following a technical fault experienced yesterday morning.
And Zesco has failed to secure about 160 mega watts power imports from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) because that country is unable to export.
Marketing and public relations senior manager, Monica Chisela said in Lusaka yesterday that generators, one and two at Kafue Gorge tripped yesterday after a technical fault. Mrs Chisela said as a result of the loss of the combined 300 mega watts, Zambia would experience above normal load shedding and appealed to the public to switch off as many appliances as possible.
She said engineers were already on site to establish what led to the tripping of the two machines. "I can confirm that two generators broke down yesterday after developing a fault but we are still trying to establish what exactly transpired. This will mean that we will have to increase load shedding in most parts of the country to avoid total collapse of the system," he said. She however, explained that the machines which had broken down were different from those worked on recently. Two weeks ago, Zesco announced that it had managed to work on the 330 kilo volts line without the anticipated long spells of blackout because of compliance by customers to switch off most of their electrical appliances.
The two generators, three and four at Kafue Gorge that were shut down on Saturday were successfully restored at 18:20 hours on Sunday.
During the period of the shutdown, 300 mega watts of generation capacity were not available and Zesco had anticipated that there would be a prolonged blackout if the public did not heed to the advice to switch off some electrical appliances.
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