THE power outage which engulfed the country yesterday resulted from a power system disturbance at Kabwe step-down substation which affected Kariba North Bank and Kafue Gorge Power stations, Zesco has said.
Zesco director of corporate affairs and business development, Bestty Phiri said in a statement yesterday that the disturbance caused the Kariba North Bank and Kafue Gorge Power Stations to trip as a standard protection measure. Mr Phiri said Zambia in the morning experienced a partial power outage except for Southern and Western provinces.
The power outage affected radio and television transmission for about 30 minutes but Zesco engineers took steps to restore power supply progressively in all the affected areas.
“Zesco therefore wishes to sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused to our valued customers. We wish to thank our customers for their patience during the outage period,” he said. Mr Phiri said because of the outage, some of Zesco clients could have experienced meter tripping as a result of an inbuilt protective mechanism.
“We wish to advise all the affected pre-paid customers to report to our national call centre if they encounter any difficulties in resetting the meters, on Airtel and MTN on 322, Zamtel on 0211363636 or send and SMS to 3636,” he said. Meanwhile, Konkola Copper Mines Plc said the power outage which occurred around 06:30 hours in some parts of Zambia affected the company.
According to a Press statement released by the public relations department, the company’s emergency generation systems were brought into operation and additional emergency power was secured from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The statement said about 220 miners at Nchanga underground temporarily trapped in two cages were promptly evacuated to safety without any incident during the power outage. Normal power was fully restored around 10.30 hours and resumption of production commenced in phases.
[Times of Zambia]
I mean really…..!
Thats dengerous for the country not to have power for about four hours, a lot of business was lost. Whatever the cause was, there is need to have some backup plans to provide power under such situations. I can just imagine what happened in some hospitals without generators.
You fire very good managers what do u expect?
Power is like oil in our country. We can have as many power stations as possible due to abundance of water and falls. The backup plan works better from diferent sources than depending on one or two. Investment in power supply is a lucrative bussiness which the country should not neglect.
The mines should also do all they can to install independent emergency power sources to drive their “cages” so that miners’ lives are not put at risk in the event of a power outage like the one just experienced.
You cannot fire scores of senior managers and leave the running of a whole utility company to one Bemba chap and expect everything to work properly. This is the start of more chaos in your lives.
BOZ has had no Governor and a board for close to two months now. Who is running the monetary and financial system in the country then?!
last tme it was a a poor innocent lizard yangwee!!
This is strange, Kabwe has never been known to trip power from the whole country. When is sata firing that Political Chap he recently installed.
George Orwel’s Animal Farm is on track!!
Fire Kabimba for ekoptence pls. all we want comprehensive report. Kabwe step down why could it be the usual use of casuals. TEST # 1 PF. HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
ZESCO is full of useless engineers , infact they are just elecricians just knowing how to switch on and off privatise the company to bring competent engineers.