Eskom excuses?

[DieselFan]

With the amount of blackouts and Eskom saying they're "load shedding" - during the day...one of their excuses is not enough power stations.

When flying east from Microland past Kendal and then Southish you see about 4 or 5 power stations. Out of the last 5 or so trips over 6 months I've only ever seen ONE operational and not on each trip...

Kendal is the largest coal powerstation in the world yet is inactive!? So what are all these powerstations doing then, if Eskom says they need more? I understand they built these power stations on top of mines, have they run dry? Surely they must have cost loads and can't afford to just be "sitting" there.

[Tumbleweed]

All powerstations require regular maintenance/ upgrades and about ten years ago the 'new' beancounters decided, in their infinate wisdom and against the industry's advice, to rather mothball certain plants and pursue the Highlands project and dabble in some nuclear technology.

Since the Cape Town fiasco, there's flapping around planning to re-introduce some of the older units at massive cost, which I believe, they don't have.

All the massive engineering manufacturers Dorbyl e.t.c. have closed manufacturing factories and where we once had a skilled industrial force, we open offices in Europe to 'procure' equiptment from abroad.

Our policy of no longer offering apprenticeships has erroded our artisan workforce and we now import welders from the far east to do maintenance work.

Escom, in there infinate wisdom, advertises on TV to tell us to use their product sparingly, but cannot filter down to inform us when the power will be cut

So, if there is ever a grudge purchase, today I await delivery of my 75kw Chinese generator to save perishable stock and curtail my staff's extended football practice during working hours.

[Dre'man]

M father in law is working on the project as a contractor to re commision Grootvlei power station.

Tuesay night they were at an Eskom function which had to be called off as the lights went out early in the evening.

[salem]

The answer to Escom's power supply problems - GO NUCLEAR, DO IT NOW!

Compared to coal, it's the cleanest alternative. Compared to Wind and Solar it is far cheaper.

With three provisos:

1) Build them safe i.e. get reputable contractors that will not cut corners
2) Train the operators properly and inspect the facility regularly
3) Find a disused deep mine for the nuclear waste

[Henni]

I heard from a fully qualified High Voltage Electrical Engineer that a certain well known & extremely knowledgeble Professor on this specific subject (sorry, I cannot remember names) stated publically that, because they are so far behind, that Escom will NEVER be able to comply with the country's current growing electrical requirements, regardles of what projects they undertake in future.

Maby someone can fill in the detail here...

[Bacchus]

This time around i will rather keep my mouth shut. Die moderators raak die moer in vir my!

[DieselFan]

Well, atleast they're cool landmarks and you can safely look inside those steamers!

[Oddball]

Hey there DieselFan,

Kendal is generally operative but you will not be able to tell that unless you know exactly what to look for. Unlike other power stations Kendal has a dry cooling system which means that you will not see any rising water vapour from the cooling towers- but best not fly over to check; there is a very strong (and hot!) updraft. You can see smoke coming from the two chimneys but Kendal has a pretty good electrostatic precipitator system that removes most of the fine ash from the flue gases so you may not realise that the station is generating at full steam...

If you fly around the north of the station have a look at the individual tall yellow metal clad 'blocks'. There are 6 of them, each housing the boiler for the 6 x 765MW units. At the top of these is a light- if it is on then the unit is conected to the grid and producing power (you can see these from the N12 highway as well). How do I know this- I used to work for 'skom and was part of the construction/ commissioning crew that built Kendal.

Most other stations in Eskom have a similar lights that tell you whether a unit is connected or not.

However, having said that, Eskom has caused huge kak in my opinion, and there should be more heads rolling. They have concetrated on AA and getting the numbers right for so long that they forgot what it was that they really were supposed to be doing- and they're still doing it wrong.

One of my biggest gripes is these huge posters and adverts that they put up urging YOU to save electricity. I haven't seen any sort of apology from 'skom to say, "sorry, we stuffed up, and we really need your help to get us out of the dwang." They did stuff up, very badly, and to add insult to injury they gave the CEO a huge bonus just before the big outages in Cape Town last year.

Last year they went on a big drive to recruit experienced ex-Eskom staff who had been encouraged to leave, because they really needed the skills. I applied and was welcomed and encouraged to apply by senior management staff whom I know. Over 1 year down the line the middle management still have not managed to get it together to even make me an offer. After that I imagine that all of the above looks like sour grapes. For a while I did want to go back and work for them, but if that is how long it takes them to make an offer to 'scarce skills' then maybe I don't really want to, and it makes me very worried that they still cannot get priorities correct.

Without bloiwng my own trumpet, I do have 20 years of experience in the power electrical field, I know power stations well, I have been on the private side, I do many of thier power electrical studies now- in other words I have valuable skills to offer; skills that I know they are desperately short of (I train a lot of thier new engineers now so I see the shortage...).

Eskom asked the country to save power and switch off all unncessary appliances but they cannot get it together to do the same at their head office, Megawatt Park... what confidence do you have in thier ability to actually solve this power deficit problem. From my point of view I think that we are in for some (more) dark times whilst they fumble about trying to be politically correct, rigidly procedural and downright incompetant.

[DieselFan]

Thanks for the length reply and it's of great ADVICE Oddball

Funny you say that Demon

I went on Saturday evening and low and behold

The scary thing is I said to my pax, something doesn't look right as I've flown over the actual cooling towers many times without problems. After flying round the eastern side as I was approacing the tower I saw a heat simmer effect - like that off a tar road

I told pax - not today thanks! This also confirms a previous time where I was downwind and got thown about worse than any thermal yet all I saw were the small towers...

To get above these towers is quite a climb from normal flying height it's like climbing towards that cloud that seems so close yet after 1000 ft it's no closer...

Where's the light thingie Oddball?

[Freddy]

Here is a recent press anouncement from Eishkom

[Low Level]

Some useless info.

I started my career at Eskom - Arnot power station between Middelburg and Carolina- one of the smaller stations, 6 x 350 mW units.

One of those cooling towers - cloud generator - under full load is evaporating 16 million liters of water in a 24 hr cycle.

Yip and when I left in '96, we have just mothballed three units at a cost of millions of rands. Heard through the grapevine it was actually put back into service shortly after that, again at huge cost.

Would love to know the actual money wasted.

[Oddball]

Hey there guys,

sorry, I have not had good connections in the last couple of days. I have modified DieselFans picture to show where the lights are- the yellow arrow. The yellow buildings house the boilers- there are 6 of these, roughly 80m tall each (and they stretch around 2m from cold to hot...)

The lights were installed so that the power station manager could see what units were on line from the highway as he came to work. For April Fools one year we disconnected a couple of these and there were some very worried people on the way to work.

As you mention, this is is the biggest coal fired power station in the weld - these cooling towers are also the biggest in the weld. You can fit them over Ellis park and just cut the corners off the park. Carlton centre would fit inside one of these and you wouldn't see it...

A mate of mine once flew over the Duvha cooling towers in a glider to see if the updraught could be used. After he regained control and re-orientated himself he made it back home in time to spend a while in the toilet. He never tried that again...

Hey there Ldel, I know about Arnot and the mothballing- I re-designed the electrical reticutlation system when they were taken out of mothballs and used the project to get few hours flying a Piper PA-28 between Rand and Arnot , getting 'skom to foot most of the bill. :D

Most of the other mothballed stations are now being brought back to service in a bit of a panic...

Demon... your LOCAL? Yah, you're just showing off the GT again...swine

[Oddball]

:D -that's Lethabo Power Station. I spent some interesting time perched on the cooling tower rims inspecting the earthing ring up there. I was lowered onto the rim from under a helicopter. Pretty scary when you are that high up on a 'wall' that is just over 1m wide...

For the GT even Kendal could be your 'local'

[Henni]

Relief may be on way for Eskom



Plans to build a power station near Richards Bay, which has some of the largest electricity guzzling industries in the country, have been resuscitated and might offer some relief to overstretched power utility Eskom.

The Rainbow Millennium power station, now renamed the Umbani power plant, was first proposed about four years ago. Peter Cowan, managing director of the Rainbow Millennium Power Company, said the project was put on hold in 2003 because the company could not find a buyer for the electricity.

Things have changed. Eskom needs to reduce demand and bring on new supply in the next six years before its own projects to double capacity to 80 000MW begin delivering electricity.

Lindi Toyi, head of the public private partnership division of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), which is co-funding the project, said yesterday that the size of the power station would depend on how much electricity Eskom would buy from it.

Eskom recently received proposals from companies to supply up to 5000MW to the national grid by co-generating electricity from harnessing the waste heat generated through industrial processes.

How much Eskom will take up from industry will largely depend on what it is prepared to pay for the power.

Eskom previously said the cost of generating new power was 25c a kilowatt hour (KWH) but industry said it would need between 30c and 40c a KWH to make it worthwhile.

"Once Eskom makes a decision, it is going to want power pretty quickly," Toyi said.

The power plant will cost $800 million (R5.4 billion) and the IDC will hold 25 percent.

Other partners include Macquarie's Africa Infrastructure Investment Fund and Kagiso's Infrastructure Empowerment Fund.

But the Rainbow Millennium Power Company's plans to build up to 540MW of power will spark concern over further emissions, which are already high in the area.

The electricity would be fed into the national grid but effectively it could more than cover the needs of Empangeni's 50MW and Richards Bay's 150MW demand.

However, this excludes BHP Billiton's Hillside and Bayside aluminium smelters, which use about 1200MW and 350MW, respectively.

The Richards Bay power plant is not relying just on the appropriate financial incentives. It will also need to address the issue of emissions.

Published on the web by Business Report on October 24, 2007.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© Business Report 2007. All rights reserved.