Mpumalanga's Matla power station has risen from being one of Eskom's weakest links to shine among its brightest stars in just 18 months — achieving almost 70% energy availability.
At the rate the ageing coal-fired station outside Kriel in Mpumalanga is performing it looks set to achieve an unimaginable 80% energy availability factor (EAF) sooner rather than later.
Matla power station GM Maserati Lesolang told TimesLIVE Premium that, among other things, they were faced with vacancies in key technical areas such as engineering, maintenance, finance, risk and assurance and could only achieve a 53.3% EAF.
At the time the station was experiencing many breakdowns and contributing to plunging the country into darkness, but its turnaround journey was now yielding exciting results.
Having our [full] operation with all six units on load we are able to see an EAF of 83% and 84%. It's a value we can achieve
— Matla power station GM Maserati Lesolang
“Our plans are projecting [achieving] above 70% [EAF]; we are anticipating the plant to go beyond 80% EAF and that's what we are working on,” Lesolang said.
She said they expected to achieve 74% EAF by the end of the financial year and more improvements next year.
“Having our [full] operation with all six units on load we are able to see an EAF of 83% and 84%. It's a value we can achieve.”
She said the future still looked bright for the 43-year-old station.
“The old lady is working ... this is a robust plant.”
Matla is a 3,600MW capacity station with six energy generating units producing 600MW each. One of its units is on planned maintenance while the other five are producing at full capacity.
One of Matla's units is expected to be mothballed before 2030 as the station is already in its twilight years, with the last of the six units expected to shut down in 2034.
Matla is among six Eskom stations in Mpumalanga at the centre of Eskom's two-year generation operational recovery plan, which started in March 2023 and involved interventions to improve the performance of the coal fleet.
Other stations are Kendal, Kusile, Tutuka, Duvha and Majuba. With the exception of Duvha, all showed improvements ranging from 9% to 65%, propelling Eskom to 150 days without implementing load-shedding.
Lesolang said before the start of the recovery plan they were experiencing unplanned outages (breakdowns) amounting to 25% while other outages caused by external factors such as poor coal quality were at about 8%.
Unplanned outages were now at 11.2% while other outages have also dropped to 11.2%.
Lesolang and her team are meeting targets and that qualifies them for performance bonuses.
They share the station's performances with all workers through meeting and screens set up around the plant.
Lesolang said they have, as staff and leaders at the plant, started holding each other accountable more and that has brought about a new culture.
“Holding each other accountable has been key for us. We don't have to be defensive and we allow people to come forward when there's an error we need to deal with.”
They have successfully moved “from blame-shifting to teamwork, which was critical”.
“We had to do that at Matla; we had to go through sessions and it was not easy and it's still work in progress,” Lesolang said.
Initially designed for an operating life of 30 years, due to substantial coal reserves its lifespan was extended to 50 years, with its first unit going to hit 50 in 2029.
Eskom is already making plans for a future without Matla, along with other ageing coal-powered stations such as Arnot, Camden, Grootvlei, Hendrina and Kriel.
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