The Sunday Mail
Martin Kadzere
The Government is carrying out pilot solar projects in the country’s eight rural provinces to acquire sufficient scientific information to roll out solar farms in remote areas, Energy and Power Development Minister Zhemu Soda has revealed.
This is being done under the Rural Energy Master Plan, which is partly meant to drive rural industrialisation in line with the country’s National Development Strategy (NDS1 and NDS2) and Vision 2030.
Rural industrialisation has largely been losing steam despite the majority of the people living in the countryside.
The Government believes that the pursuit to become a relatively prosperous society by 2030 would necessarily involve spurring rural development and improving standards of living for the majority.
“Energy is critical to ensure development and industrialisation,” Minister Soda said in an interview.
“If successful, these projects will be rolled out in rural areas. We are expecting that by year-end, we will be commissioning these pilot projects.
“The extension of grid had become
too expensive and this slowed the rural electrification programme. In certain instances, you put up a line stretching about 50km for remote consumers to be connected to the grid.
“At the same time, you may not have consumers along that 50km line. This became very uneconomic,” he said.
There are cases where power grids and transformers have been vandalised.
“As such, localised generation will accelerate rural electrification, which is a key factor for industrialisation,” said Minister Soda.
Despite ongoing projects to boost electricity output, the national electricity access rate is around 41 percent and a significant urban-rural disparity exists.
About 80 percent of the rural population lack access to electricity.
However, access for both rural and urban areas is envisaged to increase from 44 percent in 2020 to 54 percent by 2025, according to the NDS1.
“When we look at it, most rural people do not have access to electricity and this impedes development,” said a development practitioner with a local university.
“What propels rural development is agriculture, and irrigation is the way to go, but you then need electricity.
“There is also scope to build mini factories in these marginalised areas where farm output can be processed, but still you need electricity.
“And more importantly, making electricity available in rural areas will incentivise potential investors who can then spearhead the industrialisation drive.”
Apart from solar projects, Minister Soda added, the potential for wind and hydro energy will also be explored.
The Government recently indicated that it was raising additional funding to conduct a wind resource measurement exercise on three sites with the highest energy
potential.
The project is meant to create an accurate knowledge base of the wind resource available in Zimbabwe through measurement and analysis to help the country plan for renewable energy projects.
The intention is to measure wind speed and direction at these sites and remotely collect data for 24 months at a hub height of 100 metres.
The data and information generated is expected to be used in designing large-scale wind power projects, off-grid or mini-grid electric plants, including for water pumping and climate research.
