Eskom's so-called grand old dames, or mothballed power stations, still contribute to electricity generation or serve as Eskom “laboratories”.
“To understand the act of mothballing,” said Eric Shunmagum, Eskom's senior manager in the generation group executive office, “one must go back to history. At one stage there was quite a lot of excess capacity in our grid. As a result of that a conscious decision was made to mothball the stations. Together with mothballing comes preservation and costs linked to that.”
“In hindsight, it was a very good idea to just mothball the stations and not entirely decommission them like Eskom did in the past.
“Going back to about 1999, there was a white paper and Eskom highlighted its long-term plans. According to these plans, by 2007 we would need new capacity. Fast forward to around 2007/8, the government realised we did not have the new capacity and turned to Eskom and asked what we were going to do.
“We decided to build Kusile, Medupi and Ingula as well as make plans for renewables. This was in terms of new capacity.”
But the old grand dames from a previous century still lurked in the countryside of Mpumalanga.
“We already had these mothballed stations and if you needed to get MW on the bar as soon as possible, they were a logical answer.”
Fast forward to about 2014/5.
“It was clear that stations like Komati, Grootvlei and Camden, while contributing much-needed energy to the grid, were costing a lot of money to run.”
“One of the more modern stations will cost us about 20c per kilowatt, and these older ones will run at R1.20 per kilowatt. If you measure production by tonne you are looking at between R600 and R800 for the cheaper stations and about R1,200 for the more expensive stations.
“Because of the pressure on Eskom to optimise costs, decisions were made in line with the integrated resource plan to shut down Komati, Hendrina, Camden and Grootvlei by 2019.”
This meant there had been no investment to maintain them.
Tshepiso Tema, the manager of Grootvlei station, comprising six coal-fired units, said it had been operating on and off.
“The first unit was commissioned in 1969 and the sixth unit in 1977. The plant was shut down and put in preservation in about 1989, but when Eskom realised we were starting to run short of reserve capacity margins, Grootvlei was gradually brought back again after 18 years of being mothballed,” Tema said.
“According to Eskom’s capacity plan, we will run until 2026/7 while the possibility to run until 2030 is being investigated.”
Their three units have an installed capacity of 200MW each but send out 190MW.
“This almost 600MW of electricity saves us from more than half a stage of load-shedding.
Justice Bore runs Camden.
“Camden was commissioned in the middle to late sixties. In the late eighties, Eskom started taking down units and the last one was done by the early nineties,” Bore said.
In 2006 the first unit was brought back and the last one between 2007 and 2010.
“Since then, it has been operating continuously. According to the 2006 plan we were supposed to shut down again by 2020, but that was extended.”
Camden has eight units in total generating 200MW of gross capacity.
“The net energy we supply to the grid is about 1,418MW. Between us and Grootvlei we save the nation from about two stages of load-shedding.
Falakhe Mdluli, the acting general manager of Komati, said no units were running at the moment.
“We used coal to generate about 1,000MW of power with our nine units previously,” Mdluli said.
“Our life expectancy was up to 2026, but more importantly Komati was the most expensive station in the fleet to operate.
“We did not invest in preserving it, and a lot of important components were shipped off as emergency spares to other power stations that are still running.”
For now, Komati is used as a laboratory for Eskom to find solutions for the future.
“The role of Komati is now one of learning.”
Like all power stations, the local community relied on work and income from Komati for decades. Since the shutdown there have been several community protests because promises of future work have not borne fruit.
“We have a training programme for local people where we teach them how to install solar. While this means they can work for Eskom, they are being upskilled and can go build a future in the outside world too.”
One of the other plans is to build a large solar plant.
“In phase one it will produce 75MW. Once this construction begins, there will be a lot of short- to medium-term jobs. Once again, the participants will in many cases be upskilled. We plan to finish in 2026. We also hope to have wind turbines up by 2027. The wind should generate about 50MW in its first phase and 20MW in the second.”
Mdluli is excited about another experimental project at Komati.
“When you parked outside you would have seen the micro-grid container. In our country, we have areas that are difficult to reach with electricity poles.”
So Eskom is making a plan.
“The micro-grid container is a foldable solar plant that fits inside a normal truck container. The solar takes its energy from the sun and inside the container, it is converted to general current.
“This truck can be driven to an area, the solar unfolded and installed and then this community will have its own micro-grid.”
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