Morupule engineer disputes Mokaila�s claims #PowerCrisis
Mpho Mokwape | Friday March 14, 2014 17:14
Speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, the engineer said the unit will be ready around May or June, contrary to what the minister told Parliament this week. “The Chinese will hand it (unit) over around May or June so Mokaila is wrong,” he said. He stated that unit one and four, which have been sporadically supplying power to the country are off. Unit one is failing to raise load beyond 40MW while unit four has a tube leak and boiler problem. “Unit one was being tested to be brought online but it is failing,” he explained.
The engineer said unit three may not be ready for the next two months though Mokaila told Parliament that it will come online at the end of April. He explained that currently, they are stripping parts from unit four to try to patch up unit three. “Unit four is in for a longer outage. After stripping unit four parts, they will then buy spare parts for unit four. The reason they are scrapping unit four to repair unit three is they stripped unit three to repair unit one and unit four initially. Chinese used parts that are ‘Chinese’. Most of them cannot be found in normal hardwares or distributors. Everything about this project is a failure,” he said.
The engineer asserted that the solution to the Morupule ‘B’ mess is to refurbish and add extra generating capacity at Morupule ‘A’ and construct Morupule ‘C’. “It needs a man with balls of steel. Refurbish and add extra generating capacity at Morupule ‘A’ and construct Morupule ‘C’. Then you can scrap and redo all Morupule ‘B’ boilers,” he explained.
Meanwhile Mokaila this week told Parliament that the country is experiencing power outages because Morupule ‘B’ is operating with one unit. He said other units are under modification in preparation for winter. “We have to understand that during winter, South Africa does not supply us with power, as the demand in their country is high, hence we need to prepare ourselves,” he said. The minister said unit two and three are under modification because the previous engineers did a shoddy job. “Unit four will also be modified soon. The recent power outages were due to failure of unit one,” he said. He explained that unit one that has been supplying the country with power was shut down due to a fan malfunction. This means that there is no supply from Morupule B. “Unit two will be ready end of March while unit three will be ready end of April,” he said.