Question NW2371 to the Minister of Public Enterprises
20 July 2022 - NW2371
Van Minnen, Ms BM to ask the Minister of Public Enterprises
On a recent oversight visit by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts to follow up on issues at Medupi and Kusile it was clear that the Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) process was not running as smoothly as it should, resulting in an often loss of generation capacity with no adequate expertise or skills to maintain the FGD systems, despite the plan to have the technical know-how to maintain environmental emissions at Medupi and Kusile at a permissible legal level, what progress is being made in this regard?
Reply:
According to the information received from ESKOM
During the recent oversight visit by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts to Kusile Power Station, Unit 1 was on forced outage. The unit has since been repaired and it is back on load. The commercial process to establish the Operating and Maintenance Contract with Technical Support that will assist in restoring the reliability of the plant, as well as providing Kusile with skills development, is underway.
Flue Gas Desulphurisation has not yet been installed at Medupi Power Station, and when it is, the learnings from Kusile will be incorporated into the Operating and Maintenance processes.