Zimbabwe experienced an electricity blackout just after 10 am on Tuesday leaving most parts of the country without power.
The “embarrassing undesirable occurrence” according to sources at the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) was caused by a massive fault on the national grid.
“Zimbabwe experienced a total power blackout that lasted 20 minutes at approximately 1022 hrs. It is a fault that ordinarily should not happen at all. For perspective, the last time such occurrence in Zimbabwe was probably in 2011,” said the source.
“Full restoration is still in progress in some areas.”
Zesa spokesperson Prisca Utete said the “unplanned power outage that happened at 1026hrs” was caused by “an abrupt system disturbance on the Alaska-Warren high voltage transmission powerlines (linking Kariba and Harare)”.
The fault has since been resolved by engineers.
In Bulawayo, most parts of the city including the city centre and industrial areas did not have power for most of the day.
On Sunday, the power utility warned of ‘increased load curtailment’ due to “technical challenges being experienced at our Kariba and Hwange power stations as well as import constraints”.
On Tuesday, the country only generated 1029 MW with stats from the Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC) showing that Bulawayo and Munyati power stations did not contribute anything to the grid while Harare power station contributed 11 MW.
Kariba and Hwange contributed 852MW and 166MW, respectively.
