Italian firm to complete Batoka feasibility study by Dec

Published: 03 August 2017

ITALIAN firm, Studio Pietrangeli, has failed to update feasibility studies for the proposed 2 400 megawatt Batoka Gorge Hydroelectric Scheme as scheduled, despite winning the tender for the project four years ago, an official has said.

Feasibility studies for the $4 billion Batoka project, which was first mooted 113 years ago, had been initially conducted by Batoka Joint Venture Consultants in 1993.

Studio Pietrangeli was supposed to complete the studies for the Batoka project on the Zambezi River, whose 2 400 megawatts (MW) of electricity will be shared equally by Zimbabwe and Zambia, by December last year.

But even after being given up to the end of the first quarter of this year, the Rome-headquartered consulting company also failed to submit the studies.

Munyaradzi Munodawafa, the chief executive officer of the Zambezi River Authority (ZRA), a joint venture outfit owned by the governments of Zimbabwe and Zambia, which manages the project, told The Financial Gazette this week that Studio Pietrangeli was now expected to present the feasibility studies to the ZRA Council of Ministers by December this year.

"They (Studio Pietrangeli) have not yet completed the updating of the feasibility studies," Munodawafa said in a telephone interview from his base in Lusaka, Zambia.

"They are now expected to present the studies in December during the meeting of the ZRA Council of Ministers. If the studies are completed earlier than December, we can call an extraordinary meeting to have that study presented."

Studio Pietrangeli, which specialises in engineering services for large dams and hydro power plants, commenced work to update the feasibility studies in 2014.

The work was initially expected to be complete in 12 months. Studio Pietrangeli has to date successfully completed work on over 160 dams and 60 hydro power plants around the world.

Its notable African projects include the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance project, which is one of the largest hydro-electric power plants in Africa, producing 6 000 megawatts (MW) of electricity.

It has also done feasibility studies for Ethiopia's Gibe 111, which is the world's highest Roller Compacted Concrete dam about 240 metres high with an associated power plant producing 1 870MW of electricity.

It is part of a series of dams which include Gibe 1 (184MW) and Gibe 11 (420MW).

The Batoka project, which will be situated upstream of the existing Kariba Dam hydroelectric scheme and downstream of the Victoria Falls, will see a dam and two surface power stations being constructed to serve Zimbabwe and Zambia.

The current technical configuration under consideration entails the construction of a 181 metres high and 720 metre-long compacted concrete gravity arch dam, radial gated crest type spillway, four intakes in the reservoir, which will take the water through four tunnels, with each tunnel approximately one kilometre in length, to the two surface power plants downstream of the dam.

- fingaz

Tags: Batoka,