The Ingula Pumped Storage Scheme is set to supply 1332 MW of peaking energy to South Africa’s grid when it is fully commissioned next year. This supply is going to be absolutely vital when controlling the demand for electricity in peak times. Gibb Projects Director, Colin Logan tells us about the current state of the project and also more about the country’s development of a sound green energy industry.
In October, Eskom announced that the country was on track for a summer without load shedding – two words that have become the bane of most people’s lives. While reminding that ‘the system is constrained but stable’, Eskom spokesperson, Khulu Phasiwe said recently that the parastatal would be investing in maintenance on the grid over the coming months with the aim of reducing plant breakdowns.
“We are currently implementing our summer maintenance programme aimed at increasing the reliability and resultant availability of our power plants.
“In terms of our existing Generation Sustainability Strategy, Eskom aims to achieve 80% plant availability, 10% planned maintenance and 10% unplanned maintenance over the medium term. We are implementing appropriate levels of planned maintenance in line with the Generation Sustainability Strategy, a move that has resulted in the reduction of plant breakdowns over the past few weeks,” Phasiwe said in October.
But even with the risk of load shedding said to be relatively low, the threat always hangs overhead and the facts are disturbing: Electricity generated by South Africa dropped by 3.3% for July year-on-year, while the country’s GDP contracted by 1.3% in the second quarter of 2015, a statistic economists suggest was directly linked to load shedding.
The problem we have is that our coal fired power stations heat water to create steam to turn the turbines – that’s all good, but we can’t turn the fossil-fired furnaces on and off at the flick of a switch, so we create huge amounts of heat — even in off-peak times when we don’t need it. If our scientists could find a way to store the large amounts of wasted electricity in a battery, energy prices would drop, reliability would be improved and availability would be constant.
With demand for power always on the rise and additions to the grid, namely Medupi and Kusile, seeming to be eternally delayed, something big is needed to provide stability during peak times of demand.
Fortunately, one solution that has been years in the making is approaching its finish line and will soon be able to weigh in with a much needed 1332 MW of reliable, peak electricity.
The Ingula Pumped Storage Scheme is an Eskom-led project and is South Africa’s largest hydro power project to date. It involved the construction of two large dams, and a network of ancillary infrastructure in the Drakensberg range, on the border between the Free State and KZN.
In order to function, pumped storage schemes require two dams or reservoirs. At Ingula, the upper Bedford and lower Bramhoek dams are located 4.6 km apart and connected by underground waterways. During times of peak energy consumption, water will be released from the upper dam and flow through four 333 MW turbines to generate the 1332 MW of electricity. At times of low energy demand, the pump turbines will drive water 470m from the lower to the upper dam where it will be stored in readiness for the next peak event.
APPROACHING COMMISSIONING
According to Colin Logan, Projects Director of Dams, Hydropower and Underground Works at Gibb Engineering and Science and a lead Eskom consultant, the project is now reaching its final stages and will soon begin generating that such valuable power.
“The project has entered what is primarily a mechanical and electrical phase. We are actually approaching the commissioning stages of the job and we certainly hope that early in 2016 we should be close to full commissioning and commercial operations. The idea is to have at least two units running commercially in the first half of next year if not more,” he says.
“The first unit should be ready for commissioning by the end of this year or early in January. There are different stages of development and we’ve had some setbacks but we are now certainly in the critical stages of the job.
“On the civils side, we are over the critical stage and we only have one or two things left to deal with to ensure watering up and we are addressing those at the moment.
“Everyone is waiting with anticipation for the project to come online and hopefully deal with some of the problems we are having with electricity shortage. It’s certainly, like many Eskom projects, got some negative public sentiment attached to it but I know that the Eskom management and everybody on the project are certainly trying to change that view. Every effort is being made to turn that around. There is a strategy but how successful it will be remains to be seen.”
South Africa has four pumped storage schemes: Drakensberg, Steenbras, Palmiet and Ingula and one other that was planned, Tubatse, has been shelved indefinitely.
These facilities were all commissioned with the aim of balancing the country’s supply when demand is high but Logan points out that when Ingula is complete it is unlikely that load shedding will be eradicated completely.
“One of the key issues of a pumped storage scheme is that it’s a net consumer of energy and it requires base-load power stations to be supplying surplus energy to the grid to allow us to pump water to store energy. What it will do is relax the pressure that has been put on open cycle gas turbines and the cost of running those turbines. They’re not designed to run for extended periods like they have been. It’s not going to wipe out load shedding; that’s just not the case,” he says.
Load shedding is of course the main driver behind the negative publicity surrounding Eskom and earlier this year, changes were made to Eskom’s leadership with the plan of changing the fortunes of the continents largest electricity producer. Brian Molefe was appointed group CEO, Anoj Singh got the job of Chief Financial Officer and Ben Ngubane was named Chairman of the company. Molefe is hugely experienced and most recently plied his trade as CEO of Transnet. Under his leadership, Eskom has already seen improvements. Ngubane said of Molefe: “He has changed the whole vibe and morale among employees in so doing making a significant difference.”
Molefe has also already established close relationships with power station managers and brought new synergies to the company.
“A lot more positivity has come from his leadership,” says Logan. “The message has been quite clear – no load shedding – and in recent times we haven’t experienced significant load shedding to the extent that we could of. It remains to be seen how sustainable that is; it’s one thing to make a decision to say no more load shedding but it has impacts on maintenance schedules and puts existing plants under significant strain but I know the follow up to that is a focused maintenance regime, it’s not like we haven’t thought about the maintenance challenges that come with running plant for longer than it should. I certainly hope that it will translate to something positive.”
Public Enterprises Minister, Lynne Brown said: “I welcome these appointments and they are part of my ongoing interventions to stabilise Eskom.
“Together with Mr Molefe, who was seconded from Transnet in mid-April 2015, they have been successful in bringing stability to the company whilst dealing with a constrained grid.”
Molefe spoke about Ingula at a media roundtable discussion in September saying: “Let me tell you now, Medupi was delivered on time and Ingula units 3, 4, 2 and 1 will be delivered on time. The final units of Medupi will also be delivered on time. These are the dates based on our turnaround plan and they are permanent dates. We will not continue to shift targets.”
Perhaps his optimism brings hope to the people working at Ingula and also those who are desperate for peak demand supply to be better managed as, to date, they have witnessed some extraordinary setbacks including fatalities, injuries, industrial action and huge budget increases.
GREEN ENERGY DEVELOPMENT
The Ingula Pumped Storage Scheme represents an investment by South Africa into green energy. Although a baseload is still required, it is undoubtedly a greener method of producing energy than some suggested alternatives. However, although there is much hype, locally and globally, about renewable energy projects, Logan explains that much development is still needed before we can solely rely on this type of technology for all our energy needs.
“We all support green energy development and investment into that. It really is a buzz word around the world but something I advocate is that it’s not the solution to our power supply but it can help to alleviate carbon emissions. Green energy alone is not really the solution, we are still quite dependent internationally on other base load power stations including coal and nuclear. I don’t think we’re at a stage where green energy will just replace those types of technology. They have their own challenges in terms of reliability of supply – the wind doesn’t blow every day and there’s not always bright sunlight. There is still a lot we don’t understand about green energy. I think it’s important to include renewable energy in the energy mix but I don’t think it’s realistic to call it a complete solution to the problem,” he says.
“Hopefully in the future we’ll find something which can sustainably remove coal fired powered stations from the grid.
“Examples I can use are countries like Germany which claim to use a high percentage of renewable energy however, they’re quite dependant on nuclear energy from France in the event that renewable energises don’t meet demand so they’re not entirely sustainable as a renewable energy outfit,” he adds.
Many industry commentators say there are compelling reasons for SA to invest further in renewable energy. Countries like Mozambique, Rwanda and Ethiopia, or the ‘African tiger’ economies with some of the highest growth rates in the world, all resolutely follow green growth paths. Take Ethiopia for example. With close to 10% annual growth in 2013-14, the country is determined to avoid the pitfalls of what it calls the conventional economic path of increased emissions, depleted resources, being locked into ‘outdated technologies’ and vulnerability to increasingly volatile fossil fuel energy prices. Instead, its government says: “Ethiopia is committed to building a climate-resilient green economy.” The country is planning to increase electricity supply tenfold by 2030; all with renewable technology.
From a pumped storage perspective, Logan is confident that this type of technology has a lot to offer and will continue to play a part in developing Africa’s energy security.
“I see the technology developing a lot. In support of a variable renewable energy supply, pumped storage will have a role to play in balancing supply and demand better,” he says.
However, when Ingula is completed and while Tubatse is on hold, there are no further pumped storage schemes in the pipeline in South Africa and Logan says this is because, based on information available right now, there is not an immediate need for another system, not for at least another 20 years.
“There are a few that are being studied. I recently done a study with EDF from France about a project in Lesotho. We also assessed the SADC for the possible outlet for supply of energy and we came back to the point that South Africa would most likely be the market for such a scheme,” he explains.
“We looked at the South African energy mix as a result, and we spoke to the Department of Energy (DoE) who developed an Integrated Resource Plan which states which plant needs to come online and projects that need to come offline because they’ve reached the end of their design life and we saw that their growth forecast for the country were set at 4-5% and were currently only achieving 1.5%. In modelling that idea with EDF in Lesotho, selling energy to the South African market, we came to the conclusion that there was no need in the short term for another pumped storage project but if we start looking around 2035, you start seeing a time where pumped storage would make sense.
“Obviously, bringing a scheme online takes 10-12 years so we’re not talking about that far in the future. Of course, this is all based on the information that was available from Eskom and the DoE but if those forecasts change and the economy turns around in a big way then everything changes significantly,” he adds.
RENEWABLE FUTURE
One thing that is certain, Ingula and the other green energy projects around the country have exposed South Africa’s professionals to new ways of getting difficult power generation projects successfully negotiated and completed. The 64 solar and wind projects under construction at present have involved engineering, banking, legal and many other types of company, offering experience and immersion in what is a relatively new type of business.
The key now is to finish Ingula with no more delays, connect it to the grid and let it do what it was designed to do. All being well, it could prove to be a springboard for investment into future renewable projects of a similar nature.
Logan has been involved with the project from the very beginning and while some staff levels on site are now starting to decline as the finish line draws closer, he has no intention to leave until everything is 100% complete.
“We have demobilised some staff in the past few months and we will continue to do so through 2016 but personally, I have every intention to be here all the way through until the end,” he concludes.