Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says four units at the Kusile power station in Mpumalanga are expected to be back on the grid by the end of the year. The coal-powered power station has been off-line since November last year after a chimney failure.
Ramokgopa was speaking during his weekly media briefing on the Energy Action Plan.
“Then there is unit 5 and unit 6. Unit 5 was not commissioned, so now the team is working on the commissioning of unit 5 and I am happy to say that by the end of this year, I will give you the timeline. Unit 5 we are going to go with the synchronisation of unit 5, so essentially gradually getting it online to give us the megawatts. So, we are going to start now in December. And then unit 6 will come, I think in August 2024.”
The Electricity Minister also says unit 4 is back on the grid, and that keeping maintenance on track at Kusile is worth celebrating.
“Thanks to the team at Kusile, unit 4 is back online, so essentially we are getting 800 megawatts. So what is a significance of this – is that unit 3 and unit 1 will be received by October, next month we get an additional 1600 megawatts. So the accumulation of these 3 units is 2400 megawatts.”
Earlier, Eskom announced that it would implement stage three rolling blackouts from 4pm on Sunday.
Electricity Minister, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa media briefing on Energy Action Plan implementation:
