Eskom's abandoned coal stations

Why aren't we fixing them?

The South African government has recently released a draft Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) that is accessible through the following link. This document plays a crucial role in shaping the government's decisions that will go into determining the country’s future electricity mix.

It’s worth reading the IRP document with the background knowledge that Eskom’s current fleet cannot be repaired without taking units offline and therefore they need a safety buffer. Ideally this margine has to be 10% of the totally installed capacity, i.e. 5GW

One noteworthy aspect of the IRP is that it made public the anticipated retirement dates for coal-fired stations. The figure below provides information on the number of decommissioned coal stations that could potentially be revitalized if there is a political will for South Africa to stay with coal for at least another 20 years.

Such a move could alleviate the issue of load shedding and create enough flexibility in the system to facilitate a comprehensive overhaul of the coal fleet.

The list of the abandoned coal stations include:

• Duvha unit 3

1 x 600 MW

• Grootvlei Units 4, 5 and 6

3 x 200MW = 600MW

• Hendrina Unit 1, 3, 8, 9 and 10

5 x 200MW = 1000 MW

The above coal units amount of 2200 MW of additional power, that’s two stages of load shedding.

What Eskom has to do is send in an engineering team to do an assessment of the status of these units. They can be repaired without imposing an additional stage of load shedding. It would help to create Eskom’s badly needed reserve capacity.

The spare parts can be engineered from South African engineering works if the original supplier no longer has them.

The Komati units 1 - 9, would have added another 1000 MW, but it has now probably been destroyed due to a foolish policy that was lobbied for by the conflicted and undemocratic Presidential Climate Commission.

I emphasize that South Africa should not abandon its coal fleet due to our primary focus on ensuring energy security. Eskom’s leadership and government has to commit in law to fix at least 40 000 MW of coal. To overhaul the entire fleet and maintain it for 2 more decades.

This commitment extends not only to our own needs, but it will also support our neighbors that are grappling with energy poverty.

South Africa should continue to burn more coal, as we add more generation capacity to the mix, simply because it’s the least constrained of all the 7 energy sources.

We should fix our coal.