The newly installed Chinese electricity turbines by Sino Hydro are overheating once they run for sometime hence the need to keep interchanging them leading to electricity loadsheding in Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Further, the machines are draining a lot of water than the Kariba Dam design capacity hence losing too much water, senior ZESCO engineers and some officials from Ministry of Energy have revealed, and Zambian Watchdog can challenge the PF government to refute.

Sources say while the water levels may not be where they are supposed to be, the situation has been worsened by high intake of water by the Chinese turbines plus they are overheating once they run for sometime.

“We had advised against installation of these machines but government insisted due to corruption. Now they are behaving like an overheating vehicle engine that cannot run for sometime without switching off for it to cool down.

We have to keep rotating them by switching maybe two out of six at any given time so that we can produce some electricity causing loadsheding many areas for hours. The country has had enough rains this year and by now, the situation should have normalised. But these machines are taking lots of water hence losing too much water from the dam. Ideally we should have been at the peak in production and we only expected loadsheding around October/November. Now we don’t even know what will happen by that time,” sources have revealed.

Zambia Watchdog