A US$3.2 million Dollars ZESCO 150 KV Power Station transformer destined for Lusaka arrived in the country through the Chirundu One Post Border Post yesterday.
Speaking when he received the Transformer at the Chirundu OSBP ZESCO Acting Director for Generation and Transmission Timothy Lungu said the Power Station was manufactured in India by Cropton Greves Company.
Mr. Lungu said the Transformer will be installed at the Leopards Hill substation in Lusaka and will be operational by the second week of January.
He said once installed and commissioned the Transformer will reduce the load shedding in Lusaka urban and industrial areas by 50 percent.
Mr. Lungu said the Transformer will be installed by ZESCO engineers and supervised by the manufacturers of the equipment.
He added that the Transformer will include protection features and accessories that will be installed on the machine.
Mr. Lungu said the ZESCO Engineers witnessed the factory acceptance tests of the equipment which he said has a lifespan of 30 years.
He said the installation of the Transformer is expected to alleviate and mitigate the suffering of ZESCO customers.
In June this year the Leopards Hill substation in Lusaka was gutted to ashes forcing the National Power Utility Company to increase load shedding in most parts of the City.
ZANIS
Always have back ups naimwe ba Zesco. What centuary are you living in?
Always have back ups naimwe ba Zesco. What century are you living in?
I don’t think they’ve learnt their lesson. they still don’t have backup. but all the same will be nice to have 50% reduced load shedding.
How can u have a $3.2 Million equipment as back up? You crazy! The correct engineering term is having redundancy on the network.
That is good news mwebantu. The load shedding is really bad. Awe congrats mwe olo no backup again.
#4 awob,
whats the difference btn redundacny and backup….actually they are not crazy,redundancy/backup equipment is measured in terms of the loss that will be incured if you never had any backup at all,so for zesco,this is an investment,coz they will gain more than what they have spent in the long run,to them it makes economic sense,to you its being crazy
Reducing load shedding in Lusaka urban and industrial areas by 50 percent sounds fine. However, ZESCO still lacks a strong competitor…I wonder why the Chinese have not invested in the energy sector?
#6 – Redundancy in Power Systems is being able to have normalcy despite losing an equipment, back up is having an equipment which is ON STANDBY whilst another is in circuit. What is encouraged if you go back to academics is to design a network that can be adjusted to handle loss of one or two equipment and not to have each substation running at half capacity. It simply does not work esp for a poor country like zambia. That’s the reason we have inter-connectors (Alternative power sources) at 33 and 11 kV to facilitate normalcy. The problem…as i said is lack of this and not lack of running all substations at half capacity.
Mr Timothy Lungu, reducing load shedding by 50% is not good enough, Zesco has been in business for a very long time and it is therefore bad planning and incompetence to go for half measures in this day and age. Zambians may as well forget about normal electricity supply. We are no better than war-torn Afghanistan where electricity supply has become a luxury. Well in Zambia you can afford all this shoddy service because you enjoy a monopoly, elsewhere you would have been forced out of business ages ago. Mr Lungu you even have the audocity to refer to the ‘Suffering Zesco customers’.
Does this make you feel proud of your company? Shame!
#8 awob,
you lose an equipment,which in this case is a whole generator,then how do you maintain normalcy,,,the only way to maintain normalcy is to have a backup equipment that takes over operations without any disruptions,in computer systems its a redundant server,in electrical engineering its a backup generator.the backup generator does not run at half capacity at all as you ably put it,it is simply idle,redundant,waiting to be triggered by a failuer of the main equipment,it takes over seamlessly,as if nothing happened,this is evident in real time critical systems
Smoothcriminal, you maintain normalcy by being able to source from elsewhere e.g Congo through interconnectors or through an alternative route.You can’t have backup worth $3.2 million
#10 – Read my comments again, you maintain normalcy by having an inter – connected system, in other words having alternative supply. That arrangement provides reliability as well as security at an economical rate. You have stand by equipment for smaller equipment like the low current applications you talked about, not a $3.2M equipment. Give me an example of a Substation with 100% redundancy.
#10 – Read my comments again, you maintain normalcy by having an inter – connected system, in other words having alternative supply. That arrangement provides reliability as well as security at an economical rate. You have stand by equipment for smaller equipment like the low current applications you talked about, not a $3.2M equipment. Give me an example of a Substation with 100% redundancy. In zambia there is only 1 for well kept reasons
Back up will be really a good idea, but where does ZESCO get another $3.2m from, very soon we shall hear they have increased the tarrifs in order to repay the $3.2m they borrowed from where ever they borrowed from, i am very sure it did not come from the Government chiluba – plundered funds.
I see there are some knowlegeable people on this blog. I come from a commerce background, please advice what then would be a suitable solution electricity wise for Zambia, looking at its capacity in terms of economic performace. Your valued input is appreciated.
What #10 has pointed out will be very much economical and cheaper, buying another $3.2m substation Transformer for back up is practically impossible in this lovely country of ours, a look at other economical means by ZESCO will be idea. Like #9 has put it, reducing Loadshedding by fifty percent is still not good, ZESCO must make efforts of stopping loadshedding by all means, I mean, are we not supposed to receive better Electricity Supply, after all we are paying for the services, tehy are not free.
You need to understand the situation at ZESCO. While the economy has been grown ZESCO has not, invested in any major expansion for the past thirty or so years, just like most of the other countries in the region. So there is inadequate supply both locally and regionally. This means that is very difficult to have inadequate or alternative supply. There are various reasons for this but mainly the Government who is the main shareholder has not invested funds and ZESCO has argued that at the current rates it is unable to source capital.from financial institution. There are also not collecting from a large proportion of residential consumers but in my opinion to lack of political will.
There seems to a problem for our politicians and also our general citizenry whether they want ZESCO to be run as a profit making organisation or social utility providing services for the public
Guys,the whole of southern africa is experiencing these power flactuations,interconnections dont come cheap,instead of zesco giving the hard earned income to congo,zim, or namibia,they would rather keep it local by having a generator,,,,the suitable solution is to have a relaible backup,what if interconecting partners are having problems, where do you switch to,remember,interconnections take a good 2hrs as downtime,while a backup is seamless,in that 2hrs zesco would have lost billions,so the best id to have a redundant system to mitigate any emergencies.Chama,at the moment,in my view we need backup systems,our neighbours have the interests of their masses at heart,they would rather serve their own frist before giving zambia any interconnect supply
#19 Smoothcriminal thanks for your input. It sure gives good food for thought. This energy crisis it appears no one in the region was prepared for it, for the period 2008/9 even rich South Africa had to implement load shedding due to lack of power. You are right the region is too unrelaible for interconnections.
#15 – Am in the energy sector, what infor do you want because a lot of Gov. policy are public documents. Energy for development concept which clearly states that at current tariff level, private sector participation in development of new generation capacity is unsustainable. There is also the National energy policy and the national energy strategy documents. They can be availed if you want.
The problem in Zambia is the wages are too poor, embarrassingly poor.
#17 – You are right, we lack the political will in Zambia.
Food for thought? – Did you know that at the moment, Installed capacity is more than the demand in Zambia. Its the rehabilitation that has caused load shedding. #17 was right, we lack the political will to change this country. Its a fact that tariffs are low but because the wages are low in Zambia they appear to be high.
# 20 Chama, actually most of the power utilities in the region informed Government in good time of the impending short fall and the need to expand. However the problem was most Governments did not provide money for expansion . Governments were also unwilling to allow tarrif hikes which would have enabled power companies to raise capital and encouraged the private sector to enter the market.
# 17, so you do you see that it is a hard decision for Government to take. Should they allow a tarrif hike and hurt the consumer or control prices and hurt the producer
#1 to #23, this is nice blogging, really made my day, first time I have come across mature blogging, though I am a new blogger, this is cool, hope ZESCO and or the ENERGY SECTOR will pick up something to make this Electricity supply thing smooth improve.Cheers.
Apparently im into IT,with an engineering company that spacialises in mining electrical reticulation and power station engineering systems,AWOB,have you had had a chance to use electrical software like ETAP6,microstation or smartplant instrumentaions,then you will see that in these modern days you dont rely on interconnections any more,a neighbour will not serve you best at the moment when you need him more,he has bigger fisg ti fry than assist you,in electrical engineering,evry second of a blackout is worth millions of $ in terms production,meanwhile the standard uptime for an interconnect is 2hrs on the international grid,in zambia it could even be 4 or more hrs,that loss in productivity is more than 3.2mil in a day for a copper smelter
But if I remember clearly, ZESCO promised that the Transformer would be in the counctry by 20th November. Installation would take 15 days and by Xmass, load shedding would be a thing of the past. Now, they are saying 50% reduction and by 2nd week of January??????????
Clearly we don’t have a working goverment.
The electricity problem is boyond acceptance……… Surely things could have been put in place to avoid all this inconvience. Zambia is a very rich country with enough resources to cater for our small population (of course nothing is used wisely)
All I can say is we so deserve to suffer…….. we pay our taxes for God knows what.
Wake up Zambia this is almost 2010