Pretoria - Koeberg’s Unit 1 has come back on line following scheduled maintenance, Eskom said on Monday.
The unit was taken out of the grid on 19 September 2016 for a planned refuelling outage after a safe record-setting continuous run of 474 days.
“The unit is currently operating at 30% of its capacity while the final start-up tests and commissioning checks are being done. The power will be increased over the next few days to reach full operating capacity by the weekend. At full load, Koeberg Unit 1 will be sending out 960 MW to the national electricity grid,” said Eskom.
Eskom said it is implementing its maintenance plan to increase the reliability of its plant which will in turn increase the utility’s operating reserves and stabilise the grid.
“It is largely due to this rigorous plant maintenance programme that we have we have had a stable supply of electricity for over a year now.”
Every 15 to 18 months, each of the two units at Koeberg is shut down for refuelling, inspection and maintenance. This routine maintenance is part of Eskom’s overall maintenance programme for its fleet of generation units.
Outages are scheduled to avoid having both units out of service at the same time and to avoid the winter months in each year.
During these routine outages, one third of the used nuclear fuel is replaced with new fuel. Maintenance, plant modifications, inspections and statutory work to ensure that international safety standards continue to be met and that reliable plant performance continues, are performed.
The utility said this maintenance and refuelling was safely completed in 42 days making it the shortest Koeberg outage since 1998. – SAnews.gov.za
