ZHUWAO BRIEF – Danger Ahead: A sinister plot is brewing

29 Mar, 2015 - 00:03 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

The Zhuwao Brief takes a short break this week from the economic series that have been the focus of attention lately.

This week we look at a proposed electric power system development plan that was prepared for Zimbabwe by a World Bank-sponsored consultant.

I am not impressed.

Before I delve into the issue of this system development plan, I would like to briefly narrate a story told to me recently.

Mai Simba is a single mother of one who works and stays in Harare with her son and the maid whom she pays US$100 a month.

Mai Simba works at a shop in town and earns US$300 per month. Mai Simba’s budget is US$50 for groceries, US$80 for the maid, US$70 for rent, US$50 for transport and lunch, and US$20 for electricity and water.

Mai Simba is left with US$30 after budgeting for her normal expenses. The maid does not buy groceries, has no rent, does not buy electricity, has no water bills, and does not need money for transport.

The maid is left with US$80 compared to her employer’s US$30.

What does that tell us? We will discuss that as we conclude this article.

We now get back to the system development plan. A power system development plan (SDP) gives indications of the manner in which a nation will make provisions for satisfying electricity demand given the fact that investment in electricity provision facilities take a long time to develop.

An SDP will make progressions on future demand for electricity and propose investments in generation capacity and power supply provisions to meet that future demand.

The SDP that I was introduced to this week is nonsensical, to put it mildly.

The plan does not provide for any additional power until 2019. This means that we will have to endure load shedding and power cuts until 2019 if the World Bank has its way.

Remember that this is the same World Bank that gave us Esap. Lord have mercy!

We now generate about 1 400MW on good days against a demand of 2 100MW. We have a 700MW deficit.

How did we get to this? Did we not foresee that we would have a power deficit? Have we not had system development plans before?

We have had system development plans as a country. The fact that we have power deficits is, therefore, indicative that the plans we had before were useless.

What gives us the assurances this time that the system development plan that seeks to keep us in darkness for another five years will be any better than previous ones? Nothing!

It gets worse if we consider the fact that the mess we are in could have been avoided if we had taken heed of what the political leadership was saying about 20 years ago.

As a nation, as Zimbabwe, we chose to take on board what was coming from the engineers and technocrats. We followed the advice given in the system development plan.

But which politicians did we not listen to? We ignored a man who, this year, turned 91. We ignored a man that the Western sponsored media seek to describe as a dictator. We ignored the son of Ambuya Bona Mugabe.

We ignored President Robert Gabriel Mugabe when he came with investors to expand Hwange Power Station.

During the mid 1990s, President Mugabe secured investors who would expand Hwange’s capacity by developing Units 7 and 8 to give an additional 600MW.

But that project was frustrated so much it never saw the light of day.

That operational system development plan advocated for investment in inter-connectors.

The recommendations that were contained in that system development plan were that we would secure imports to meet the demand that Zimbabwe was forecast to have.

We have now gone back to the archives and dusted the blueprints for the expansion of Hwange.

We are doing it now, 20 years later.

The proposed new SDP is still placing imports as priority number one and recommending that we deploy solar only in 2038.

It has been said that the hallmark of stupidity is to continue doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

Are we so stupid as a nation to being hoodwinked by the same World Bank that brought us Esap? Can we not wake up and start planning better futures for ourselves?

In this article I will not even touch on the other technologies for generating electricity such as methane gas from waste. I will not mention run-off hydro-electricity generation from the multitude of dams that we have. I will not even go the route of coal bed methane generation which gives the lowest possible cost of power. I will ignore that fact that Zimbabwe is estimated to have 20 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Zambezi Valley; more reserves than Mozambique.

I will simply talk about solar. Mushana. I will make three points about solar.

I am focussing on solar for several reasons, but one of them is that solar is relatively fast to deploy.

But before I make these three points, I must debunk the myth that solar is redundant technology because of the demand profile.

We have a demand profile that has two peaks; one during the early hours of the morning and another one during the early evening.

Our engineers want to make us believe that the demand profile is cast in stone and cannot be influenced. What utter hogwash and nonsense. Can we not deploy “time-of-use tariffs” to influence demand?

The early morning peak coincides with the time that people are preparing to go to work. This is the time that people are bathing.

They bath using hot water heated by electricity and yet we would have had a full day of sun the previous day. Surely, we can concentrate on converting our geysers to solar and thus free up power. That is my first point on solar. We must deploy solar thermal for domestic use.

But when we deploy solar geysers have we utilised our total roof space? No we would not.

What stops us from laying panels on the roofs of all of our houses and buildings?

My second point is that households could become independent power producers and generate electricity for personal use during the day.

That power would be fed into the grid when it is not being used within the house. Such solar generation at household level would be cheaper than running the domestic generators that we are running.

My third point relates to the hydrological danger of relying on Kariba Power Station.

The drought of 1992 placed severe strain on Kariba even before both Zimbabwe and Zambia had doubled their generation capacity.

That generation capacity has not had any corresponding increase in stored energy in the form of the water body.

What this means is that a drought of the magnitude of the 1992 drought would leave us in deep trouble.

We would be better placed if we were to have solar generation which would enable us to save the water during the day and only deploy Kariba in the absence of the sun to generate with.

I have not even touched on the need for integrated resource planning for the energy sector. Why do we remain one of the few countries that still uses the expensive cooking technology of electricity instead of gas?

I am not even discussing the dangers of outsourcing power policy issues to a player such as Zesa Holdings and leaving government without that capacity.

But let me get back to Amai Simba and her maid. Her maid now has a house whilst her employer is still a lodger.

We need to look critically at our needs as a nation. We should disavow ourselves of the notion that bigger is always better.

We must approach issues with a fresh mind and not be consumers of nonsensical World Bank prescriptions.

There is an SDP out there seeking to perpetuate the underdevelopment of Zimbabwe.

Danger! Hokoyo! Basopo! Skelem!

Icho!

Patrick Zhuwao is chair of the Zhuwao Institute, an economics, development and research think tank focused on integrating socio-political dimensions into business and economic decision making, particularly strategic planning. He can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected]

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