Ministry of Energy and Power Development Permanent Secretary, Patson Mbiriri urged farmers and other energy consumers to use renewable energy to ensure self sufficiency in terms of power generation and defeat the fear of inadequacy of power.
Mbiriri said this while delivering his keynote address during the Power and Energy discussion hosted by the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (ZERA) at the Harare Agricultural show yesterday.
“We need to have adequate power generation internally, to have self sufficiency in terms of power generation.
“Many farmers are caught up in that misfortune of fearing that electricity will not be available, of fearing that they will lose their crop during the winter season because of inadequacy of power,” Mbiriri said.
He added that the country is generating 1 300MW and the demand is about 1 800MW meaning there is a short fall of about 500MW which is being catered for through imports from South Africa and Cahora Bassa which are, for now, the basis of the guarantee of no load shedding.
ZERA, through Engineer M. Siyakatshana educated farmers on a system called Net-metering published in June 2018 and the opportunities it presents to farmers and other consumers.
“Net metering is a billing mechanism that allows the consumer to be credited for solar PV electricity that they add to the grid.
“Ordinarily if you have a solar system at your home sometimes you don’t use all the energy that is coming from that solar system, so at the times that you are not using that solar system this scheme allows you to connect to the grid so that the utility can credit you for the power that you have supplied to the grid,” said Eng Siyakatshana.
He added that the cost of renewable energy sources has been continuously going down.
“For instance for the past decade the cost of solar PV has gone down by over 90percent
“This presenting several opportunities to consumers and suppliers alike,” Eng Siyakatshana said.
He also said that currently only 42 percent of consumers are connected to the grid and are using the net metering system and urged the remaining 58 percent to follow suit.
The farmers were also educated on the use of Biogas by the Rural Energy Fund while the Tobacco Research board illustrated the use of a “low-cost tobacco curing barn.”
The Ministry of Energy and Power Development implored consumers to use power sparingly and also urged people to be mindful of the fact that the world is going renewable hence they should be careful of their investments.
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