Cape Town – Eskom said on Tuesday that the first unit of the Kusile power station had been connected to the national grid for the first time on Monday evening.
The South African electricity provider said in a statement that the move would add an extra 800mw to “further stabilise the power system to support South Africa’s economic growth”.
Kusile, a green-fields, coal-fired power plant located near the Kendal Power Station in Mpumalanga, will comprise six units, each rated at an 800mw installed capacity.
It is due for completion in 2022. The plant is the first in Africa to implement clean fuel technology such as flue-gas desulphurisation, a state-of-the-art technology that removes oxides of sulphur, such as sulphur dioxide, from exhaust flue gases.
Eskom noted that the connection of Unit 1 of Kusile came at a time when it had been building excess capacity to ensure security of power supply. In addition to Unit 6 of the Medupi power station, which had been operating for more than a year, it had added 1,332mw from all four units of the Ingula Pumped Storage Scheme, as well as the sychronisation of Medupi Unit 5.
The statement added that excess capacity had enabled Eskom to increase its electrification target to more than 200,000 households by the end of March 2017, against the target of 169,722 set by the Department of Energy.
Eskom said it had also increased electricity exports to neighbouring states, many of whose hydro schemes had been hit by drought. Eskom’s electricity sales to Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe rose 31.6 percent in the six months to September 30.
Eskom’s interim group chief executive, Matshela Koko, said: “Eskom has focused on lessons learnt from its past history of new build projects and this has led to this early synchronisation.
Our build programme is now delivering ahead of our re-baseline schedule, our operations have stabilised and, as a result, we are in a position of surplus capacity.