The Kusile power station project near eMalahleni in Mpumalanga produced power for the first time on Sunday when unit 3 was synchronised to the grid, Eskom said on Wednesday.
"The unit was loaded and kept stable at 60MW, making it the third of the six units at Kusile power station to be synchronised to the national grid," the embattled power utility said.
Eskom said the next step would be to test and optimise the unit over several months which meant providing intermittent power to the grid, and at times possibly none.
Once all the testing is done, the unit will be fully powered at 800MW and will feed into the national grid for the country’s consumption.
Eskom’s chief operations officer Jan Oberholzer said that unit 3 was synchronised more than 8 months ahead of the approved target date of December 2019.
"Once unit 3 has attained full power, it will be a step closer to be commercially operational which is currently targeted at November 2019.
"The construction and commissioning activities on the remaining three Kusile units, namely unit 4-6, is progressing well. Once completed, Kusile’s six units will produce a total of 4,800 MW."
