Komati power station finally retires at age 60
23 November 2022
News
Eskom has finally shut down unit 9, the last remaining coal-fired generation unit at the 60-year-old Komati power station. The power station first started generating electricity in 1961, with unit 9 commissioned in 1966. Over the years each unit has been decommissioned as they reached their operating life’s end.
The site of the power station in Mpumalanga will now be converted into a wind and solar energy production site and offer facilities to train up the next generation of Eskom employees. After the repurposing, it will be able to produce 150 MW of solar energy and 70 MW of wind energy. It will also have an onsite storage battery capacity of 150 MW. This will replace the meagre 121 MW of capacity that the coal-fired unit was capable of generating before being mothballed.
Eskom is hoping that the Komati project will serve as a global reference on how to decommission and repurpose a coal-fired station to one which is comfortable on the renewable energy landscape.
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