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Progress at Medupi

COLOSSAL POWER
Medupi power station will be the fourth-largest coal plant in the southern hemisphere and the biggest of its kind with dry cooling in the world

COLOSSAL POWER Medupi power station will be the fourth-largest coal plant in the southern hemisphere and the biggest of its kind with dry cooling in the world

27th June 2014

  

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The Limpopo-based Medupi power station, which has been under con-struction since May 2007, will be a direct consumer of coal mined from diver-sified mining group Exxaro Resources’ Grootegeluk mine, also in Limpopo.

The coal will be supplied to Medupi directly from the mine’s processing plant through a conveyor system.

Medupi is located on an 883 ha site, consisting of a dry-cooled coal-fired, baseload power-generating plant, comprising six 800 MW units, with a 4 800 MW installed capacity. It will be the fourth-largest coal plant in the southern hemisphere and the biggest of its kind with dry cooling in the world.

The planned operational life of the station is 50 years.

Using high-tech supercritical boilers, Medupi will operate at higher temperatures and pressures than older boilers, thereby providing greater efficiency.

It is the first baseload coal-fired station to be built in South Africa in more than 20 years and its on-schedule delivery is viewed as critical.

The project is considered unique as Medupi is being built backwards. Traditionally, State-owned power utility Eskom would have started with Unit 1 and ended with Unit 6. The new approach with Medupi, however, is due to the rock conglomeration on the southern side of the construction site, which is excavated and reused as the engineering fill on the northern side of the site.

This project will form part of Eskom’s integrated strategic electricity plan and is designed to be ready for flue-gas desulphurisation.

The first unit, Unit 6, is expected to be synchronised to the grid in the second half of this year.

The cost of the project has increased from R91.2-billion to R105-billion.

Latest Developments
Eskom reported in its March New Build News that production at Medupi experienced delays owing to high rainfall occur-rences that month. However, Eskom said work on Unit 6 had not been affected owing to the unit being fully enclosed.

As of March, all 64 air-cooled condenser fans on Unit 6 had been commissioned and were undergoing operational enhanc-ing. Two of the three boiler feed pump motors were started and tested on March 1.

Unit 6 instrumentation and control cabling installation had also improved, with a continuous upward trend in most areas, while the Unit 6 boiler reheater welds were complete and ready for inspection.

Meanwhile, Eskom’s northern grid secondary plant transmission team recently completed the commissioning of all the 400 kV busbars in the Medupi high-voltage yard to ensure that infrastructure is in place. The works involved the commissioning of three 400 kV bus bays, a 1 400 kV bus coupler bay and a 400 kV transfer coupler bay. The high-voltage transmission yard is ready for the commissioning of the Spitskop 1 and 2 feeder bays, which will be commissioned as soon as minor remedial work on the 400 kV overhead lines has been completed.

Eskom further reports that the separators – used to separate steam from steam water droplets – are in place, and that welding on the separators is almost complete.

With regard to turbine works, the commissioning of the motors at boiler feed pumps 11 and 12 has started, with the direction test complete.

The incoming coal system from the 10 000 t coal silo is oper-ational, and the under-silo feeder conveyors at the silo were successfully commissioned, together with the direct current supplies, in January. Eskom reports, however, that while the system is live, no coal will be transported to the coal stockyard until the successful commissioning of the stacker and the repairs on the eastern seasonal stockpile have been completed.

Work on the auxiliary boilers and the auxiliary cooling system is also nearing completion.

The first phase of the commissioning of the water treatment plant has passed the 60% mark.

Edited by Samantha Herbst
Creamer Media Deputy Editor

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