Tutuka prepares to boost output on the double

Steam rises steadily from some of the cooling towers at what would have been SA’s worst-performing power station but for a catastrophic breakdown at Kusile in October last year.

Still, the management of Tutuka power station were confident during a visit by minister of electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa on Wednesday that they can improve the Mpumalanga-based plant’s performance significantly before the worst of winter sets in and double output before the end of March next year.

If successful, that will initially add about 800MW to the grid, enough to avoid almost one stage of load-shedding, increasing to 1,500MW by the end of March 2024 — enough to avert one-and-a-half stages of national power cuts.

Exposés in the media have made Tutuka synonymous with corruption at Eskom and the state-owned power utility itself has told of the sabotage, tender fraud and supply chain irregularities uncovered at the facility.

During a presentation to the standing committee on public accounts at the end of January, former CEO André de Ruyter, explained how criminality at Tutuka is linked to broader issues in Mpumalanga where much of the crime and corruption is driven by syndicates in the area. The criminality, he said, is “well-organised and deeply embedded”.

De Ruyter said the GM at Tutuka, Sello Mametja, wore a bulletproof vest when walking around the plant and he and his family have bodyguards.

Mametja left Tutuka a couple of weeks ago and has been replaced, in an acting capacity, by Mxolisi Ntanzi, formerly a project manager at the station.

Still, Eskom assured Business Day there was nothing untoward about Mametja’s departure from Tutuka. “Considering the needs of the organisation, it was decided to reassign Mr Mametja to the Operating, Maintenance and Outage Centre of Excellence where he will serve the coal-fired power stations,” Eskom said.

Ramokgopa visited Tutuka on Wednesday as the fourth part of a tour of all 15 of Eskom’s over the next two weeks.

Ntanzi only wears a reflective vest as he walks around the power station with Ramokgopa.

“I feel safe. The previous GM had some issues ... which [contributed] to him needing a [bulletproof] vest ... but I am feeling safe and I trust the workers,” he told Business Day

During his visit Ramokgopa said Tutuka was the worst-performing plant after Kusile and it was the first facility where management and union leaders have told him that there are problems linked to corruption such as “issues that require attention in their procurement environment”.

“There are procurement irregularities [at Tutuka] that can be closely associated with the existing production delays,” Ramokgopa said. That includes the procurement of spare parts for units when they break down.

Ramokgopa also said the Tutuka management team told him of issues experienced with the quality of coal supplied, but he said there was nothing to suggest that problems in the coal supply chain were linked to criminal syndicates.

“I can confirm there are issues of coal quality — coal mills are being destroyed because there are rocks and stones mixed in with the coal delivered to the station ... but the quality of the coal has nothing to do with the cartels.”

Rather, he said, it was due to “what was coming out of the mine. Essentially it is the quality of the coal that is coming out of the mine that requires our productive attention.”

On the day of the minister’s visit, three of Tutuka’s six 600MW generation units were running, delivering an electricity availability factor (EAF) — a measure of power generated compared with total installed capacity — of 32%. While low, that’s an improvement from earlier this year when the plant’s EAF was only 17%.

Ntanzi tells Business Day his teams wants to improve EAF to about 50% by winter and to 70% within the next 12 months.

Two projects that will help them achieve the target are finalising the refurbishment of four cooling towers at the plant by replacing the fills — a medium that increases the surface area for evaporation — in the cooling towers, and improving the reliability of the coal-milling plant.

“If we can get those right the EAF will definitely improve,” he said.

erasmusd@businesslive.co.za