No load shedding is anticipated today as Eskom intends to meet the country’s electricity demands while performing the requisite maintenance on its power generating plants.

We continue with our series on Eskom’s world of power generation with a focus on the Komati Power Station which sits about 37km from the town of Middelburg in Mpumalanga.

The power station is one of our return-to-service fleet which also includes the Grootvlei and Camden power station - all of which are fully operational and have added 3 741  MW generating capacity to the grid. The three power stations were once not operational but have now returned to service.

The planning of Komati Power Station started during the mid-1950's on the farm Koornfontein. In November 1961 the first unit, Unit 5, was commissioned with the last unit, Unit 9 - adding power to the grid in March 1966.

Komati was designed to generate 1 000 MW with five units rated at 100 MW and four at 125 MW

During the mid-80’s a decision was made to take units and later entire Power Stations out of service, mainly because of surplus capacity at the time.

It was also decided not to let the plant deteriorate but to conserve it properly to return it at a later stage. The conservation process was called ‘mothballing’.
The first plant to be mothballed was Turbine 5 on the 15th of December 1987 followed by Boiler 3 on the 26th of March. The rest of the plant was mothballed at intervals thereafter and the last to be mothballed was Unit 4 on the 6th of December 1990.

Different methods were used to prevent deterioration of the plant, such as painting, the use of vapour corrosion inhibitors (VCI) and the passing of dehumidified air through the boilers, turbine feed and steam circuits and the generators.
The power station was gradually brought back to service from about 2005, a project that was completed in 2012. This was done in order to meet the increasing electricity demand.

http://www.eskom.co.za/Whatweredoing/ElectricityGeneration/PowerStations/PublishingImages/KomatiA2.jpg

We will continue to provide regular updates on the state of the power system through various media platforms.

Issued by Eskom