ZIMBABWE
As a land-locked country in southern Arica, Zimbabwe has strong foundations for economic growth — but a strained electricity landscape.
Zimbabwe is facing an energy supply crisis, with load shedding unable to help save the coal-powered grid system and a dried-up Kariba Dam not providing enough hydropower to cover demand. As such, electrification is poor (52.7%) and supplies are unreliable.
Hope remains in renewables, though…
As per the National Renewable Energy Policy, the country aims to achieve 1100MW of installed renewable energy capacity by 2025 or have renewable energy capacity make up 16.5% of total generation, whichever is higher. These figures rise to 2100MW and 26.5% by 2030.
The country aims to have solar power take up the largest share of Zimbabwe’s renewable capacity (1575MW), and has introduced various initiatives, such as import tax and VAT incentives and net metering, to ensure this.
But large-scale PV projects will drive contribute the most to Zimbabwe’s PV landscape in the years to come…
PLANNED PROJECTS
Zimbabwe’s government signed a deal for a 100MW PV plant towards the end of 2022. A local private energy company, Energreen Private Limited, will oversee the constriction of this installation in multiple phases, with an expected completion timeline of two years.
Also in the latter half of 2022, talks of a 38MW solar plant to power Mimosa Mining Company’s operations arose, a framework for a 100MW solar power station was agreed upon and a 500MW solar power station built by SkyPower Global came to fruition. Moreover, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe announced plans to invest in almost 500 solar-powered base stations across Zimbabwe in the next 2 years.
A few months into 2023, plans for a 100MW floating solar pant were proposed by China Energy, which would see the installation of around 1.8 million PV panels. This proposition followed the announcement that independent power producer (IPP) Power Ventures Africa Limited would construct a 100MW PV plant in Zimbabwe.
SegenSolar is keen to foster the development of additional small and large-scale PV installations across Zimbabwe. If you are a homeowner, you can get in touch for more details about our work. If you are an installer, you can explore our range on the portal — just log in or sign up for a free account.