ZESCO limited says it regrets the system disturbance that resulted in the loss of power supply to most parts of the country on Monday night.
Senior manager for marketing and public relations Bessy Banda in an official statement said that, “Preliminary investigations indicate that the power outage was caused by a suspected fault at Kitwe substation which later spread to Luano substation. The entire ZESCO Grid was characterized with excessive high voltages due to sudden drop in loads. This triggered the automatic switching off of the generators at Kariba North Bank and Kafue Gorge Power stations to safeguard and protect them from damage.”
Prior to the outage, the internal demand for electricity stood at 1622 Mega Watts. As a result of the system disturbance, over 1500 megawatts was not available on the national grid causing a partial national outage affecting Lusaka, Copperbelt, North-Western, Northern, Eastern, Muchinga, Central and Luapula Provinces.
Banda said only 90 megawatts from Victoria Falls Power Station remained on the grid supplying power to Southern and Western Provinces.ZESCO Limited is in the process of restoring power in all the affected areas.
“So far we have restored power to Muchinga, Eastern, Northern, Lusaka and Central Provinces. We are still working to restore power to the Copperbelt and North- Western Provinces,” Banda said.
Investigations are still underway to establish the actual cause of the fault.
Please ba ZESCO this is so disturbing and here in mufulira its unbearable esp to the mines …it can affect lives baneeee!!!!!
BEng guys where are you whats happening? Crooks can’t help this time hey? Innovate guys,innovate- you were not trained for maintenance. Set up some solar energy plants.
This is the problem of staffing national companies with relatives and tribesmen. When will Zambians learn that you cannot eat, switch on, surf the Internet, invest national resources etc with your tribe? The incompetence, lack of experience and professionalism are showing at Zesco, ZRA, FRA, Zamtel, and ZCCM-IH.
Admit it guys…ZAMBIA IS A FAILED STATE!
How do you expect investors to bring their money into such basket case of a country.
Once the “power house” of Southern Africa…It is all but gone.
The decline is in direct proportion to the number of British expats in the country. Please examine the statistics.
My advice to the intelligentsia is to migrate and desert this stinking ship!
This is the highest incompetency by Zesco failing to run power systems efficiently and effectively, resulting in not restoring power on time across Zambia despite having over employed engineers and engineers in training. The government should take the biggest blame for this: failure to facilitate generators in hospitals and sensitive areas, interfering in the running affairs of Zesco and appointing non qualified board of directors and chief executive; here, qualified is referred not to academic qualifications, but ability to run a company in a productive professional manner. I wonder what happened to emergency generators at Luano Chingola and standby generators at Konkola Mines which are monitored by Zesco, for KCL to have imported power from Congo.
?@Michael Bwalya
Who told you that Zesco monitors standby generators at KCM?Please, don’t post your ignorance here.