The R161bn Kusile Power station in Mpumalanga has been hit by regular coal and water leaks, which often lead to plants being shut down and contributing towards loadshedding.
The condition of the power station near eMalahleni and one of the newest to be built at a great cost, has come under sharp scrutiny following a week of blackouts by Eskom due to capacity shortages. Kusile, one two power stations built to help secure the country’s energy generation, is beset by defaults including leaks and technical issues according to employees at the station.
“Kusile Power Station has an established process to manage plant defects including leaks. As leaks occur they get reported, prioritised and repaired following the maintenance process,” said Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha.
Workers at the power station told Sowetan at the height of loadshedding that the plant’s auto reject system, which is used to reject bad coal meant for the mills, had to be opened manually to cast off bad coal.
Mantshantsha, however, said the auto reject system did work and since last year Eskom had established a contract for mill-reject removal for when there were challenges with the auto reject system.
Employees told how the power station was unable to produce power at optimum capacity, which could prevent loadshedding .
“This is a new plant but it keeps on failing. Coal leaks might cause fire, therefore when there’s a coal leak the mill must be shut down immediately according to the Fossil Fuel Firing Regulations (FFFR),” a worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. The employee, a technician, said if they did not have mill in operation the power generated got reduced.
“One mill at Kusile gives out 200MW,” another employee said. Another problem that workers are experiencing are dire shortages of spares, which they said often led to prolonged outages.
“The coal is leaking from the mills, the whole plant is leaking,” another worker said.
“Kusile as a new power station is in the process of procuring all the required spares in line with the Eskom procurement supply chain management process,” Mantshantsha said.
He said the two newest power stations, Medupi and Kusile, had defects that Eskom was attending to.
“It has been regularly stated by Eskom; the design technical problems hampering the maximum performance of both Kusile and Medupi have been identified, and the technical solutions have been agreed with the major contractors. As previously communicated a number of times again, the teams are working on implementing the technical solutions in order to optimise and improve performance.
“While this work to correct these design defects is now almost complete at Medupi, at Kusile it started in June this year, as previously communicated to the public,” Mantshantsha said.
Another problematic power plant, according to Eskom employees, is the aging Hendrina Power station, which is bedeviled by a problematic unit that has broken down four times since recently returning from scheduled maintenance.
Mantshantsha said this was expected as the power utility had underinvested in the unit.
“Eskom has consciously underinvested in this unit in anticipation of it being shut down soon. Unfortunately, and due to the capacity constraints, we need to run the unit longer than originally planned,” he said.
“The boiler is therefore not in a good condition and the frequent boiler tube leaks can be expected.”
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