Eskom gets a boost from Kusile Power Station as Unit 4 finishes development

Eskom has completed Unit 4 at Kusile Power Station. The coal-powered power station was handed over the unit to Eskom’s generation division on Tuesday. This could be a positive sign for the rest of Eskom’s year. And if it isn’t, we’re used to it.

The power station underwent “vigorous testing and optimisation” over the past five months, according to Eskom. It was connected to the national grid in December last year, with it only being considered officially a part of Eskom’s power sources on Tuesday, 31 May.

During testing, Unit 4 performed as Eskom meant it to. 720MW was sent to the grid during tests, which the state power utility claims helped reduce load shedding slightly over the past five months.

Power Up!

Kusile is a six-unit power station, and two more units are currently being worked on as we speak (or so they say). Once completed, the Kusile Power Station is expected to cost a total of R118 billion. For that price, you’d think it could be completed just a little quicker. But you’d also expect a country to have electricity for most of the day, so who are we to judge.

“The Kusile project team and Eskom are working tirelessly to complete the rest of the project without any further delays as the country needs every megawatt of power it can get,” said Bheki Nxumalo, Eskom group executive for capital projects.

Once Kusile is fully complete, all six units will be pumping out power. In total, it should be supplying 4.8GW of power. Unit 5 and 6 are the only units left to complete. Now if they would get on with it, maybe we could all have lights all the time.

Eskom also mentioned earlier this week that as it stands, 1,976MW units of power were getting maintenance work over the coming week. They also said that another 15,398MW of power was ‘unavailable’ because of breakdowns.

As it stands, after Tuesday’s handing off of Unit 4, we should experience less load shedding. The difference will probably be negligible, but negligible is better than nothing. Let’s just enjoy the win from Eskom, and worry about those other issues tomorrow.

Source: TechCentral