Electricity Minister continues with visits to power stations
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Less than a month into the post as the Minister of Electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa is set to continue with his visitation to various power stations around the country.
Dr Ramokgopa will be visiting Grootvlei Power Station today, Hendrina and Arnot Power Stations on Thursday, Matla and Komati Power Stations on Friday and the Majuba Power Station on Saturday.
The visit to the various power stations began last week with the aim of engaging with the managers and staff members.
Ramokgopa said the coal powered fire stations need to up their performance during the winter season with Koeberg’s 920MW Unit One expected to delay in returning to service during a visit to Koeberg Nuclear Power Station.
He also highlighted the underperforming power stations in Mpumalanga Tutuka Power Station in particular saying significant improvements need to be made.
“We know that at Kusile we can’t make an improvement anytime earlier than in November of this year.”
“So it means that the other [power stations] must meet the demands disproportionately because in winter, we know the demand is going to rise exponentially. We had hoped that Koeberg will be within the timeframe…so we are likely to miss the target of 23 July to get the additional 920MW. To put it into context, that’s one stage of load shedding so that was going to help us to bring it down.
“So we need to put greater emphasis on those 13 [coal fired] power stations to improve their energy availability factor [EAF],” he said.
The Minister said Tutuka and Kusile power stations in particular need to up their power generation significantly.
Tutuka is said to have an energy availability factor of between 15% and 17% and Kusile has an EAF of some 19% due to the long term breakdown of three of its units.
“I did say, when we went to Tutuka that it is the worst performing and we can get an additional 2500 to 3000MW [from it]. So Tutuka must do everything possible to help us in this situation and the others will keep on adding.
“Kusile can’t…realistically, we can only get those units in terms of their planning [which is] the four of the five that are out by the 24th of December and then the remainder will come back on stream in February next year,” Ramokgopa said.
He emphasised that the department, together with all stakeholders, are doing much work to ensure that the electricity crisis is resolved as quickly as possible.
“So we are doing everything possible. Once we have visited all of these stations and we are confident of the numbers that the station managers are giving us we should be in a position to communicate where we are in relation to addressing this situation.
