Eskom under fire from MPs

BandwidthAddict said:
Since when does it take eight years to build a coal power station, these are not nuclear power stations
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Kusile is on year 6. Not finished yet.

Medupi have so many strikes daily it might take another 20. ( it is on year 7)

Strikes.
 
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DJ... said:
Most of the blame, sure. But on this occasion we have a "wet coal" excuse, which as far as I'm concerned is a wet blanket excuse more than anything else. That's just poor management, of the current crop...
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+100
 
BandwidthAddict said:
Since when does it take eight years to build a coal power station? You should stop smoking your socks, these are not nuclear power stations idiot.
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Maybe to commissioning of the first unit, but Medupi's first unit should be turned on somewhere later this year/ early next year and they started in 2007.

The timeline is in line with the Sampur Power Station and Lakvijaya Power Station in Sri Lanka and ours are bigger units.

I tried to compare it to the US/UK but they don't have new coal power plants that I could find and there is a debate on if they should built a new one.

Edit: US and UK did add some extra units to their plants. That took about 2 years or less from what I can tell. But then again that isn't really the same as building an entire plant
 
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Rkootknir said:
It takes 8 years (on average) to build a big coal fired power station like Medupi \ Kusile.
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In Germany it takes 5 years on average to build a coal power station.
I'm not sure if they're as big or complex as ours but we should have been finished with Medupi by now considering that this is a national crisis and therefore all stops should have been pulled out.

If this was Europe, USA, Canada, China, etc. the president/government would have stepped in by now and sorted things out.
Striking should be banned for these projects since it affects the entire economy.
 
Paul_S said:
. the president/government would have stepped in by now and sorted things out.
.
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Our president/government is enjoying out tax money (Nkandla etc). Why would they step in? They don't give a flying monkey about the country.. only their pockets.
 
Rkootknir said:
The topic simply reinforces the opinion that MPs are morons. Eskom should not be under fire here - they warned the government that they were running short of capacity and that new power stations needed to be built in the mid '90s. This problem is something that can be squarely (without any sense of wrongdoing) be laid at the foot of the government at that time - i.e. the ANC.
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Oh good grief. That was back in 2008 that maybe, just maybe that excuse held some water. Both Eskom and the ANC should be under fire. They are incompetent and wasteful in the extreme because it really is just another get the cadre rich scheme that generates electricity every now and then.

Stock piles get wet. On the outside. If you have a correctly sized stockpile the coal on the inside will remain dry. And you can always dig up some more.

The truth is that the good stuff is being sold overseas and the crap stuff is being used here. And at the same price parity cost. So 'we' pay an over inflated price for crap that doesn't burn too well. The crap they couldn't give away.
 
KSINGH said:
Is there really a difference?
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Yep, there is.

Looking for the root cause will give you the reasons. Saying things like 'we lost the technical knowledge' is just an excuse. If all the power station experts had died in a plane crash 20 years ago there might be a reason why we have idiots designing new ones today. But they didn't.

Why did we lose the technical knowledge?
 
Albereth said:
Yep, there is.

Looking for the root cause will give you the reasons. Saying things like 'we lost the technical knowledge' is just an excuse. If all the power station experts had died in a plane crash 20 years ago there might be a reason why we have idiots designing new ones today. But they didn't.

Why did we lose the technical knowledge?
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And they could have avoided losing technical people AND have employed new ones.

But Eskom would rather pay the people mega million bonuses.
 
I dont buy the excuses, coal is sometimes intentionally wet to improve the amount of time it burns for.
Its hurting our currency now and any efforts are too little too late.
 
DJ... said:
Most of the blame, sure. But on this occasion we have a "wet coal" excuse, which as far as I'm concerned is a wet blanket excuse more than anything else. That's just poor management, of the current crop...
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With this I agree. Wet coal issues can be managed and it looks like Eskom simply hasn't tried. Maybe they should contact Sasol for some help.

Sasol has many kilometers of conveyer belts and huge coal stockpiles at Secunda and I haven't ever heard of them running into wet coal problems.
 
Think the biggest cock up was when they decided to build pebble beds instead of regular nukes and extra transmission lines.They then scrapped the pebble beds, so now we sit with the results of a bad decision taken by eskom and the goverment from 20yrs ago.
 
Albereth said:
Yep, there is.

Looking for the root cause will give you the reasons. Saying things like 'we lost the technical knowledge' is just an excuse. If all the power station experts had died in a plane crash 20 years ago there might be a reason why we have idiots designing new ones today. But they didn't.

Why did we lose the technical knowledge?
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agreed, many changes have happened since the utility decided to downsize in the late 80's and then not gear up quick enough for the development and refurbishment plans of the last 20 years.

ofcos most of the experts were given packages and they probably went to Oz or NZ. and its still happening to this day thanks to qoutas and politics.
 
Don't let the pols get away with blaming Eskom. They're deflecting criticism away from the government, which is where it properly belongs.

Don't blame Eskom.

BLAME THE GOVERNMENT!!!
 
nobody in government at that time having a ****ing clue about the realities of big construction projects.
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Nobody in government has an effing clue about anything, except bonuses, corruption and trough feeding while on a gravy train.
 
Koosi said:
Nobody in government has an effing clue about anything, except bonuses, corruption and trough feeding while on a gravy train.
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ja man.. you don't get into government to help people, you get in to help yourself to some sweet gravy...
 
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