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Golden Sibanda Senior Business Reporter
Indian industrial engineering firm Jaguar Overseas Limited has won the tender to rehabilitate Harare Thermal Power station. Sources at power utility Zesa Holdings  said the rehabilitation exercise, meant to  boost plant generation capacity, will cost $76 million.
This comes as the country seeks to drastically reduce the crippling power deficits, which  are disrupting industrial and commercial activities, through turnkey projects to increase supply.

“The tender for rehabilitation of Harare Power station went to tender and was awarded to Jaguar Overseas,” the source said.

Zesa has also gone to tender for the rehabilitation of small thermals – Bulawayo and Munyati – to boost output from 50MW to 270MW.

Bulawayo has installed capacity for 90MW, Harare 120MW and Munyati 100MW, but all three thermals are producing below capacity due to old and antiquated equipment such as boilers.

JOL builds transmission lines, substations, low and medium voltage distribution systems. An engineering, procurement and construction contractor, it executes projects on turnkey basis.

Its scope of work extends from engineering to procurement, supply and installation. Construction activities include survey, civil works, erection and commissioning lines and substations.

The services also include procurement of power plant equipment for substations, designated-fabricated towers, conductors, insulators and hardware accessories among others.

The industrial plants engineering firm is also a leading supplier of power equipment and integrated solutions such as GIS, SCADA, AMR and DMS for power transmission and distribution.

Rehabilitation of the three small thermal power stations will help reduce the supply demand gap.  Zesa is only able to generate about 1 300MW against peak period demand of 2 2200MW.

The supply-demand gap is managed through frequent load shedding and imports from the region.

This has raised concern for huge planned projects such as expansions in mining.

Another Indian company, Wapcos, was last year contracted to carry out feasibility studies on the plans to repower the stations.

The repowering exercise will involve replacing the old boiler technology with new state of the art systems that are more efficient.

Rehabilitation of the small thermals will complement efforts by Government to increase output at Hwange (thermal) and Kariba (hydro) by increasing their capacity to add 900MW to the grid.

The Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority has also issued a total of 20 licences to allow independent producers to contribute to efforts to ameliorate Zimbabwe’s widespread power deficit.