Medupi inching towards commercial operation

“Eskom is pleased to announce that the second unit of its new power station, Medupi Unit 5, was loaded to full load, 796MW generated on Saturday, 17 December 2016.

“This is a significant achievement since its successful synchronisation on 8 September 2016 and indicates that Unit 5 is closer to commercial operation,” Eskom’s interim chief executive Matshela Koko said.

Eskom said full load is a major milestone in the process of commissioning and optimisation of the unit on route to commercial operation.

“We are pleased with this significant milestone and believe that power from this unit will go a long way in strengthening the power supply to the country.

“We commend the project team for their hard work and level of commitment in delivering the project and this achievement confirms our quest to ease the pressure on the national power grid,” Koko said on Tuesday, 20 December.

Medupi Unit 5 is being progressively commissioned and optimised to ensure that the power it delivers is stable, consistent and reliable.

During this final optimisation and testing phase, the unit is not expected to stay on load for long periods of time and will deliver power intermittently.

Medupi is a green field coal-fired dry-cooled base load station comprising of six units rated at 4800MW installed capacity.

Once completed, the power station, which is located in Limpopo, will be the fourth largest coal-fired plant and the largest dry-cooled power station in the world.

Unit 5 will progressively be tested and fine-tuned until the project is satisfied that the systems are fully operable and reliable for final handover. This is also to ensure that the unit is safe to operate, and will perform exactly as designed for the next 50 years.