The repairs at Kusile power station in Mpumalanga to bring three of its six generation units back online after a major failure in October last year are progressing about one month ahead of schedule.
This means the three units should all be operational again by the end of November, instead of late December as was previously estimated.
However, even with the finish line in sight, Eskom is not yet able to say what the total costs of the temporary repairs for units 1, 2 and 3 will be.
During a visit to Kusile on Monday, electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said with work still under way it was not possible to give a final figure of the costs to bring these units back online about 12 months earlier than would have been possible had they only pursued a permanent solution.
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.
To bring the units back into service as soon as possible, Eskom decided to implement a temporary fix, including building and operating temporary stacks for units 1, 2 and 3 without the use of the flue gas desulphurisation mechanism for 13 months while it worked on finding a permanent solution.
Eskom said in May it had so far spent R250m on the construction of temporary stacks at the plant, but these costs were likely to escalate as it rushes to return the units to service by the end of the year to ease load-shedding.
Eskom head of generation Bheki Nxumalo, who accompanied Ramokgopa, declined to provide an update on the costs incurred to date. Echoing the minister, he said that while they know the costs have increased above R250m, they will only be able to provide an update on total expenditure when the project has been completed.
There is also still no cost estimate for permanently fixing the causes of the faults, but Ramokgopa said they have now been able to get access to the collapsed chimney to better assess the problem.
Given what they know now, and barring any unforeseen defects, a permanent fix should be completed by December 2024.
To make use of the temporary stacks, Eskom needed permission from the national air quality officer to postpone the compliance time frames for minimum emission standards for new plants, given that the temporary stacks will bypass the flue gas desulphurisation plant, increasing sulphur dioxide emissions.
The national air quality officer granted the postponement, allowing Eskom to operate the three units without the use of the flue gas desulphurisation plant until March 31 2025.
The 4,800MW nameplate capacity power plant is currently not generating any power after its only functional unit, unit 4, was taken offline for maintenance in September. This unit is expected to return to service before the end of the month.
Unit 5, which was damaged by a fire in October last year while still under construction, is expected to be commissioned next month. The final unit, unit 6, is expected to come online for the first time at the end of 2024.
Getting the Kusile units back online is a “critical path on the way out of load-shedding”, Ramokgopa told journalists during a media briefing on Sunday.
Getting units 1, 2, 3 and 5 (each with 800MW capacity) to start generating power by the end of November “gives us a considerable number of megawatts”, he said.
“The four units will put us close to about 3,000MW, providing an additional buffer as we ramp up planned maintenance.”
Ramokgopa reiterated that Eskom would not veer from its plans to increase planned maintenance during the summer even if this means SA will be subjected to higher stages of load-shedding.
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