Medupi power station powers up for first time
Analysts warn of a lot of work ahead
ESKOM announced yesterday that the first power had been produced by its Medupi power station in Limpopo.
The power utility said unit 6 started generating power at 11.03am yesterday, making it the first of Medupi power station’s six units to be synchronised.
Synchronisation, or first power, is the process whereby the generator in the unit is electrically connected to the national power grid, in such a way that its power is perfectly aligned with all the other generators to generate and deliver electricity to the national grid.
Eskom’s chief executive Tshediso Matona said that was the final stage marking an exciting milestone towards full commercial power. “Today we celebrate the achievement with Team Medupi. The electricity flowing into the grid marks a new beginning.
“Within the next three months, South Africa will see Medupi unit 6’s full potential of 794 megawatts being fed into the national grid,” Matona said. He congratulated Team Medupi for their efforts in achieving the important milestone for the country.
He said that while unit 6 was the first of Medupi’s six units, it should be noted that all required auxiliary services for the entire power station were ready to ensure that Medupi’s total output of 4 764MW was fully synchronised to the South African power grid.
Minister of Public Enterprises Lynne Brown said the synchronisation of unit 6 at Medupi was a step towards full power generation (794MW) and therefore a step closer to alleviating some of the country’s energy challenges.
“This will contribute significantly to South Africa’s and the region’s economy in the long run.
“We recognise that this is only the beginning, but I am confident that achieving this significant milestone will sustain the dedication and commitment of the Eskom team as they work towards the completion of the project,” Brown said. – African News Agency
Within the next three
months you’ll see unit 6’s full potential on the national grid
THE INITIAL start-up of Eskom’s first new power station in decades was welcomed yesterday but the news came as cold comfort for a country suffering from crippling power outages.
The embattled power utility yesterday announced what it called a milestone, the first synchronisation of the Medupi power station’s first unit out of a total of six.
Eskom described synchronisation, or first power, as the process whereby the unit’s generator was electrically connected to the national power grid, such that its power can be fed into the grid.
Energy analysts and economists warned that despite Eskom’s achievement, there was still a lot of work to be done for Medupi to provide reliable power.
Chris Yelland, an energy analyst and managing director at EE Publishers, said it was too early to celebrate and the challenge for Eskom would be when the machinery got ramped up to pump power at a faster pace.
“It is indeed a milestone and we must congratulate Eskom and its contractors for that, but we must equally remember that it is four years delayed.”
When Eskom first announced the Medupi project it expected to see first power as early as late 2010. “As a lot of the machinery starts to get operational, that is when you realise that there is over vibra- tion on the conveyor belt and boiler tube licks as you start to ramp up the system,” Yelland said.
The struggling power utility has been engulfed by financial and operational problems directly linked to the delays in the commissioning of its two power stations, Medupi and Kusile, which are both over budget.
Analysts have estimated that the cost of Eskom’s problems to the economy is R300 billion since 2008, when the country suffered its first wave of national blackouts.
In Eskom’s carefully crafted statement, there was no acknowledgement of the previous delays that its power projects had suffered.
Eskom chief executive Tshediso Matona said this was the final “milestone” towards full commercial power.
“The electricity flowing into the grid marks a beginning. Within the next three months, South Africa will see Medupi unit 6’s full potential of 794 megawatts being fed into the South African national grid,” Matona said.
The full synchronisation would take about six months, Eskom said earlier this year.
Businesses and households would continue to endure power cuts by Eskom to avert total collapse of the grid, as the utility was struggling with its ailing fleet.
Crunch time
Francois Stofberg, an economist at Efficient Group, said crunch time for Eskom would be when it added power to the national grid.
“We will have to wait up until power is up and running, but it is a good sign in the short term,” Stofberg said.
The power utility said earlier this year that full synchronisation would take about six months.
However, even with the station’s six units synchronised, the country’s electricity crisis was still far from over.
Eskom is now forecasting that Medupi will be fully operational by 2018, compared with its original goal of 2014.
Roger Baxter, the chief operating officer at the SA Chamber of Mines, said this was good news amid the grim electricity crisis facing the country.
In December, Eskom missed its own deadline to test and connect the first 794MW unit at Medupi power station to the national grid.
Johan Muller, the programme manager for energy at Frost & Sullivan, said the country should hold its excitement for now.
“I suspect we are another two to three years away from being out of the power crisis, and given the current rate of progress, it might take longer,” Muller said.
Vusi Khumalo, the president of the SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said in the short term Eskom’s announcement was good news and would reassure potential investors that the country was serious about solving its electricity crisis.
Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown said the first synchronisation of Medupi’s unit 6 was a step closer to alleviating some of the energy challenges crippling the country.
“This will contribute significantly to South Africa’s and the region’s economy in the long run,” Brown said.
She, however, acknowledged that this was only the beginning. Eskom had already moved back the date for the initial testing and connecting of the first 800MW unit at Kusile power station to the grid to the first half of 2017 – as much as 18 months later than its previous deadline.