Eskom mending environmental breaches at Kendal power station

• 4 years ago (2020-05-08)
• David Flin

Africa 323 Coal 299

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South African state-owned power utility Eskom is in the process of mending the technical faults that led to the environmental breaches at the coal-fired Kendal Power Station. Eskom said that this will take some time to be completed as a significant amount of repair work is required.

The station has been operating above the emission limits since strike actions late in 2018 left infrastructure vandalised and damaged. The internals of the electrostatic precipitator (ESP) were vandalised and the functioning of the dust handling plant compromised during the strike action. Repair of the ESPs of several units required long outages.

Unit 1 has been operating within the 100mg/Nm3 emission limit since February 18 following a 14-day outage. Unit 2 is also operating within regulatory compliance limits. Unit 5 is currently offline and repairs on the ESPs and dust handling plant have started. Due to long lead times to manufacture components, it is expected that the unit will only return to service during the first quarter of 2021. The next planned outage after that will be Unit 6. Units 3, 4, and 6 are currently operating above the emission limits, for which Eskom has been granted an extension.