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| Steam leakages on the lower floors of the Camden machinery house: SOURCE: Daily Investor |
German consultancy group VGBE Energy has warned Eskom that urgent repairs and upgrades to its water treatment plants could lead to over 13,000MW of power loss, equivalent to 13 stages of load shedding, from the grid. The warning came from a report commissioned by the National Treasury to analyze Eskom's coal-fired power plant performance and recommend improvements. A team of German engineers studied South Africa's struggling power utility, Eskom, for four and a half months. The report highlighted the poor state of Eskom's water treatment plants, particularly at some of its largest power stations.
The report found that Medupi and Matimba power stations rely on a shared raw water treatment plant, which is currently in disrepair and unable to supply both stations at full capacity. If repairs are not carried out, the plant could shut down 12 units with a total capacity of 9,800 MW. The current water supply is insufficient to install the wet flue gas desulfurisation plant that needs to be built for the Medupi and Matimba sites by 2025.
The water treatment plant at Kendal is also in poor condition and needs urgent maintenance and refurbishment. If the plant fails, six units – 3,840 MW of capacity – would be offline. This means that if these ailing water treatment plants fail, 13,640 MW of generation would go offline, resulting in a record high stage 13 load-shedding in South Africa.
