Eskom is under pressure to stabilize a broken chimney at its Kusile power station in Mpumalanga and it is feared this could increase load shedding.
Units one, two and three of the plant went offline as a result of a smoke duct collapse in October, rendering the units inoperable. There are six units in all, each capable of generating 800 megawatts.
“While only the duct for unit one collapsed, the other two units were rendered inoperable as it is not safe for Eskom to run them and risk further damage to the ducts for units two and three or worse yet, cause the entire chimney to collapse. ”, Eskom said last year.
The 9 m diameter exhaust duct from unit one collapsed due to a buildup of sludge.
Presenting the progress made at the unit in Kusile on Sunday, the group’s interim executive for generation, Thomas Conradie, said further investigation had revealed that there was an excessive buildup of ash slurry in the flues of the three units, which increased the weight, which compromises the integrity of the flues and chimneys.
Leaders of the cash-strapped utility have been in meetings with the treasury to discuss ways the utility can raise funds to fix the problem and make the plant usable, according to a senior source. Eskom.
The problem is that “there is no quick fix for the chimney because the utility company does not have equipment to hold the chimney upright. The temporary solution will take at least 12 months to build. Importing a ready-made material to support the chimney would be too expensive and we can’t afford it right now,” the source said.
News24 reported that the repair of the existing chimney could take up to two years, if time is allowed for public bidding processes, entering into a contract and mobilizing resources, and this only if a major catastrophe can be avoided.
“That [Eskom] is billions of rands over budget and years behind schedule, with a target completion date of 2026 and an estimated final cost of around R147 billion, according to an October 2022 estimate by Eskom, which does not include interest and other costs,” reported News24.
Industry expert Chris Yelland said the chimney repair would be detrimental to Eskom and the treasury because the final bill could be closer to a quarter of a billion rand.
On Sunday, Eskom said the October 2022 failure of the stack system at Kusile, which knocked out more than 2,000 MW of capacity, was the main cause of the elevated load shedding stages. This, together with the planned extended outage of unit one at the Koeberg nuclear power plant, was responsible for three stages of load shedding.
“Eskom is doing everything possible to reduce the duration of these outages as much as possible. Although load shedding stages have been high and for extended periods, this does not indicate that the electrical system is approaching a blackout,” he said.
“In fact, load shedding is implemented to ensure that adequate reserve margins are maintained to manage the risk of a blackout. Therefore, there is no greater risk of a blackout than normal.”
Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter said on Sunday that the utility planned to synchronize Kusile’s five unit with the grid by the end of the year, allowing testing before it can be handed over to Eskom.
He added that the utility’s generation plan, which seeks to recover close to 6,000MW of capacity in the next 24 months, involves putting Kusile’s three units back into service, while also focusing on other fleet units that require equally costly and time consuming energy. repairs to return them to a reliable condition.
De Ruyter said that “we are paying for the sins of the past” and that not signing renewable energy contracts in 2014 is what was causing such high load shedding.
