Eskom is under pressure to stabilize a damaged chimney at its Kusile power station in Mpumalanga and there are fears it could add to the load.
Plant units one, two and three went offline as a result of a collapsed drain in October, rendering Units inoperable. There are six units in total, each one capable of producing 800 megawatts.
“When only the channel of one unit collapsed, the other two units were out of service, because it was not safe for Eskom to open and risk causing more damage to channels two and three or, worse, causing the entire chimney to collapse,” Eskom said last year. the past
The 9m diameter exhaust duct of one unit collapsed due to slurry pile up.
When presenting the progress made in the unit in Kusile on Sunday, the group’s acting executive for generation Thomas Conradie said that it is further investigated that there is a very large ash slurry in the ducts of all three units, adding weight, which compromises the integrity of the chimney and chimney.
Cash-strapped power utility bosses have met with the treasury to discuss how the utility can get funding to fix the problem and get the plant up and running, according to a senior source at Eskom.
The problem is that “there is no quick fix for the chimney because the utility does not have the equipment that can hold the chimney. The temporary solution will take at least 12 months to build. Importing ready-made materials that will hold the chimney will be very expensive and cannot be bought now,” said the source.
News24 reported that the fix for the existing chimney could take up to two years, if time is allowed for the public tender process, for the contract to be completed and the mobilization of resources – and this is only if the disaster is more avoidable.
“That [Eskom] it is billions of rands over the budget and last year, with an expected completion date of 2026 and a final cost of approximately R147 billion, according to the October 2022 estimate by Eskom, which does not include interest and other costs,” News24 reported.
Industry expert Chris Yelland says the chimney repairs will cost Eskom and the treasury as the final bill could approach a quarter of a trillion rand.
On Sunday, Eskom said that the failure of the chimney system in October 2022 in Kusile, which eliminated more than 2 000MW of capacity, was the main cause of the phase of load shedding. This, along with the planned complete outage of one unit at the Koeberg nuclear power station, is responsible for three stages of open-shedding.
“Eskom is working to reduce the duration of the outage. Although the stages of load shedding are high, and for a long time, this does not indicate that the power system is about to shut down,” he said.
“In fact, load-shedding is implemented to ensure an appropriate reserve margin to manage the risk of outages. Therefore, there is no higher-than-normal risk of outages.
Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter said on Sunday that the utility plans to have five Kusile units synchronized to the grid by the end of the year, which will allow tests before they can be handed over to Eskom.
He added that the utility’s generation plan, which seeks to recover about 6 000MW of capacity in the next 24 months, is to return to service the three Kusile units, while also focusing on other units in the fleet that require the same time and are expensive. repair to bring it back to reliable condition.
De Ruyter said that “we paid for our past sins” and did not sign a renewable energy contract in 2014 that led to load shedding.