Harare — HWANGE thermal power station is ready to start operating at full capacity after the country's power utility Zesa Holdings in conjunction with Nampower of Namibia successfully refurbished it.

Zesa Holdings public relations manager Mr Fullard Gwasira on Friday said three of the units are now ready to function as the refurbishments have been successfully carried out except for one more unit that is still being looked at.

"Currently, we have five units ready for firing at Hwange Power Station. "We are currently running one unit that is generating 80 Megawatts (MW) due to coal constraints.

"The stage one units are the ones that we are refurbishing in conjunction with Nampower of Namibia and to date we have completed three out of the four, giving out about 360MW and with the last one pending finalisation," he said.

The refurbishment of the units at the thermal power station led to load shedding as the power produced by the one unit left running and the power generated from other sources such as Kariba and imports cannot sustain the whole country.

"As of today, we are generating 80MW at Hwange, 750MW from Kariba and importing 270MW from HCB, 50MW from SNEL," he said. Mr Gwasira said the power potential from the plant when operating at full capacity is 920 MW with stage one generating a maximum of 440 MW.

"The existing installed capacity is four units at stage one, generating a possible maximum of 480MW, and two stage two units generating a maximum of 440MW to make a total of six.

But Mr Gwasira was quick to say that load shedding could not be blamed on the refurbishments of the generators but the ultimate cause was the erratic supply of coal to the power station. "The current increase in loadshedding is due to shortages of the primary fuel at Hwange Power Station, which is coal.

"Hwange thermal station depends on the colliery," he said. The coal situation remains critical to the sustenance of the only operational unit. Failure to procure more coal may put Hwange Power Station on forced outage, thereby exacerbating load shedding.

A fortnight ago the only operating unit had a shut down as a result of the shortage of coal to keep the station running and as a result many areas around the country were without power for long periods.