Kusile Unit 3 synchronised to the national grid 8 months ahead of schedule
16 April 2019
The Kusile Power Station Project, situated near eMalahleni in Mpumalanga, reached a new milestone on Sunday 14 April 2019 when Unit 3 was synchronised to the grid and produced its first power in the early evening.
The unit was loaded and kept stable at 60MW, making it the third of the six units at Kusile Power Station to be synchronised to the national grid.
The first synchronisation of Unit 3 marks a key milestone towards the full commercial operation of the unit. The next step will be testing and optimisation of the unit over several months which means it will be providing intermittent power to the grid, and at times may even provide zero megawatts. Once all the testing is done, the unit will be fully powered at 800MW and feed into the national grid for the country’s consumption.
“Unit 3 was synchronised more than 8 months ahead of the approved target date of December 2019. Once Unit 3 has attained full power, it will be a step closer to be commercially operational which is currently targeted at November 2019,” Eskom’s Chief Operations Officer Jan Oberholzer said.