Mothballed Stations

Gunny said:
I asked about this early last year and finally Eskom is doing some form of relieve management.

TheTimes article.
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lol
 
This involves reinstalling major equipment, which can take anything from 12 to 24 months to be delivered because we import it ,” Ratau said.
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So what happened to the original equipment? Sold off I bet.

Yeah, good that they're doing something for the short term, but if we want the economy to keep growing we're still going to be putting up with black outs and cutting back on consumption for a long time yet.
 
Some of these PS were built before most of us were born and I'm probable on the older side of the average forumite. One of the biggest problems is getting spare parts for the control systems. Nobody manufactures these anymore. All of the design details for these power stations were done manually on paper. Nothing was available electronically. They have been shutdown for 17+ years and all maintenance and operating staff been retrenched. Getting these PS back on line within 12 to 24 months is going to take a HUGE effort. I really doubt that SA and/or Eskom have the skills and capacity to do this. I know that Eskom have been in the process of de-mothballing them for several years with very little success. I also know that Eskom have scavenged some of the equipment to replace and maintain other newer PS with compatible designs. They are also very old designs with poor efficiencies and even worse environmental impact. In some cases I'm not even sure there is a closeby coal supply as some of the mines have been worked out, meaning transporting coal at a premium is the only option.
I'm not very optimistic about this one as a real solution.
 
Nick333 said:
So what happened to the original equipment? Sold off I bet.

Yeah, good that they're doing something for the short term, but if we want the economy to keep growing we're still going to be putting up with black outs and cutting back on consumption for a long time yet.
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the Mothballed stations were canibalised to fix other power stations..... security was also lax so I would not be surprised if the local scrap merchants got a few tons of metal
 
VanZan said:
Some of these PS were built before most of us were born and I'm probable on the older side of the average forumite. One of the biggest problems is getting spare parts for the control systems. Nobody manufactures these anymore. All of the design details for these power stations were done manually on paper. Nothing was available electronically. They have been shutdown for 17+ years and all maintenance and operating staff been retrenched. Getting these PS back on line within 12 to 24 months is going to take a HUGE effort. I really doubt that SA and/or Eskom have the skills and capacity to do this. I know that Eskom have been in the process of de-mothballing them for several years with very little success. I also know that Eskom have scavenged some of the equipment to replace and maintain other newer PS with compatible designs. They are also very old designs with poor efficiencies and even worse environmental impact. In some cases I'm not even sure there is a closeby coal supply as some of the mines have been worked out, meaning transporting coal at a premium is the only option.
I'm not very optimistic about this one as a real solution.
Click to expand...

Switch gear, turbines, alternators were all pulled out. They have to install new control systems and generators but the boilers and basic structure is there and they easy to reconnect to the grid. So 2 years sounds reasonable. It takes them that long to get a gas turbine running from scratch. Remember most of the infrastructure is in place there already, coal delivery lines, grid lines, building.
 
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