Today, Minister of Energy, Hon. Peter Kapala responded to a question in Parliament asked by Shiwang’andu Member of Parliament Stephen Kampypongo on what urgent measures Government is taking to restore operations that have, for the past one week, been shut down at the Shiwang’andu Mini Hydro Power Station in Shiwang’andu District.

Here are the highlights;

✅Shiwang’andu hydropower station is one megawatt (MW) total output as it consists of two by 0.5 megawatts (MWs) units located in Shiwang’andu District and supplies power to customers in the area and interconnected to the nation grid through a 33kv line.

✅The power station was shut down for repairs and maintenance of the common canal that delivers water from the reservoir to the power house for power generation.

✅The mitigation measures that Government undertook during the power outage was to supply customers that receive power from Shiwang’andu power station from the national grid through the 33kv power evacuation line.

✅It is also imperative to note that Shiwang’andu only has one incomer line, therefore when the line goes off it means that the whole area will have no power. To this end the power station was shut down from 4th March 2024 and concrete walls to common canal repairs were completed within 48 hours.

✅The concrete walls to the common canal however required a minimum of 14 days in order to cure before it could be given light loading to allow one generator unit to be put back into operations.

✅On 20th march, 2024. one unit has been put back to service and the area will not experience load shedding.

✅However, any power outages noted in the past week could be associated with load shedding that ZESCO implemented on 11th March, 2024 for the whole country.