Zambians should brace for up to 12 hours of power cuts starting as the state-owned power warned Wednesday of a drastic reduction in available water in the dam that feeds the country’s main hydropower station.ZESCO said it would “with effect from Wednesday 4 January 2023 adjust the hours of loadshedding to twelve (12) hours daily until further notice.” 

The corporation’s ability to meet power demand remains constrained by the drastic reduction in available water in the Kariba reservoir for electricity generation at Kariba North Bank Power Station,” ZESCO said in a statement. 

It added: “At present, the power station’s generating capacity has been reduced from its installed 1080 Megawatts (MW) to below 400MW.”

The country’s power crisis has been worsened by the outage of a 150MW generator at Maamba Collieries Limited Power Plant for routine annual maintenance from January 4-20

ZESCO had on January 1 announced that it would commence rotational loadshedding with effect from January 3 as a result of a drastic reduction in available water for electricity generation at Kariba North Bank Power Station due to critically reduced water levels in the Kariba reservoir.