Eskom does not yet know what it will cost to make permanent repairs at Kusile power station near Emalahleni in Mpumalanga where three generation units were taken offline after extensive breakdowns in October.
The state-owned power utility has so far spent R250m on the construction of temporary stacks at the plant, but these costs are likely to escalate as Eskom rushes to return the units to service by the end of the year to help ease load-shedding.
According to electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, who was at Kusile on Monday to get a status update on the repairs, the temporary solution is on track to be completed by December, but there is no cost estimate for fixing the causes of the faults.
In October last year a 9m diameter flue gas desulphurisation duct, which carries emissions from unit 1 into a large chimney, collapsed under the weight of ash build-up inside the pipe. The chimney also houses the flue gas ducts for units 2 and 3. As a result all three units — with a combined generation capacity of 2,100MW — had to be shut down, contributing to two full stages of load-shedding.
Ramokgopa said an accurate cost estimate to implement a permanent solution to the problem could be provided only after completing “a more detailed assessment”.
Information on the cost of fixing the fault “can only be provided once the slurry has been removed and when they have gone inside the chimney to do an inspection to understand the defects”, he said.
However, he said, the temporary repairs for units 1, 2 and 3 were on track to be completed by December 24. Unit 5, which had not yet been commissioned, should be “fully running” by April 2024. Together this would add about 3,200MW of generation capacity, enough to mitigate three stages of load-shedding.
At present, only unit 4 is in operation, which means the plant is running at about 16% of capacity.
“Kusile is particularly important to the resolution of load-shedding ... If the three units were operating today, they could each give us about 800MW,” said the minister.
While Eskom works on finding a permanent solution for the build-up of slurry in the flue gas desulphurisation ducts at Kusile it has been granted a temporary exemption from complying with air-quality regulations.
The exemption, granted by the department of forestry, fisheries & the environment in terms of the National Environmental Management: Air Quality Act will allow Eskom to return this capacity to the grid more than 12 months sooner than would have been possible without the exemption.
It allows the utility to build and operate temporary stacks for units 1, 2 and 3 without the use of the flue gas desulphurisation mechanism for 13 months. This is likely to result in increases in sulphur dioxide emissions, which environmental groups have warned will have major health consequences for people living nearby.
Ramokgopa said the government accepted the implications of implementing this temporary fix, given that it would only be in use for a limited period. “There are harmful effects, we are not denying that,” he said.
A report commissioned by Life After Coal and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air found that more than 13 months of unabated sulphur dioxide emissions from the three units at Kusile could cause as many as 492 deaths.
Eskom needs the national air quality officer to issue a decision on the one-off postponement of the compliance time frames for minimum emission standards for new plants, but the temporary exemption granted by the department allows the utility to continue with construction work on the temporary stacks, which could occur in parallel with the environmental approval process.
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