A comparative cost assessment of electricity outages and generation expansion in Zimbabwe

The study assesses the sectorial cost of electricity outages and cost of expanding own generation to avert outages in Zimbabwe. The main sectors used were agriculture, mining, industry and households. These sectors lost significantly due to electricity outages. The cost has been assessed on the basis of direct and indirect cost. Sector surveys were carried out. Questionnaires were used as the main research instruments. Results revealed that households were exposed to more outages and other sectors were priorities. Mining reported the highest both direct and indirect outage cost per mine and in total industrial sector reported the highest. For the overall sector cost, industry reported the highest cost and households the least. Total outage cost for one year represents a quarter of total expansion cost required to avert the problem. The study concluded that expansion is a must to avoid electricity outages. The study recommends large scale expansion in generation.