Eskom has added 800MW of new generation capacity to the national grid after successfully bringing Kusile power station’s final unit, unit 6, online.
It marks a “crucial step towards completing one of South Africa’s largest infrastructure projects and is a key milestone in Eskom’s strategic objective of adding 2.5GW of new capacity to the grid by March 2025”, the company said in a statement on Sunday.
“Kusile power station will contribute a total of 4.8GW to the national grid once all units are fully operational, making it South Africa’s largest infrastructure project. Its sister project, Medupi, will see its unit 4 return 800MW by the end of April 2025 from an extended outage following a generator stator failure. Both South Africa’s new-build power station projects will then be essentially completed once Kusile unit 6 is in commercial operation.”
Together, the power station builds ran hundreds of billions of rand over budget.
“Eskom is at a critical point in returning megawatts to the grid as we are currently in a constrained state… Our focus is now on ensuring that Kusile unit 6 achieves commercial operation in the second half of 2025, further strengthening South Africa’s energy security,” said Eskom group executive for generation Bheki Nxumalo in the statement.
Over the next six months, Medupi unit 6 will undergo extensive testing and optimisation before reaching commercial operation, when its 800MW will officially be added to the Eskom generation fleet.
Read: Eskom added no new plant in 2024 yet lights mostly stayed on
Eskom CEO Dan Marokane added: “We reiterate our commitment to ensuring that South Africa is in no way returning to the levels of load shedding that we experienced in 2023, and our focus remains on delivering a more reliable, resilient and sustainable power system.” — © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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