New clean coal-fired capacity in the Eastern Cape is to be doubled, the Independent Power Southern Africa (Ipsa) group said on Tuesday.
It intended increasing its overall portfolio of clean coal-fired capacity under development from 500MW to nearly 1 000MW, Ipsa said in a statement.
It would do this through the addition of new steam turbine units to be built in the area between East London and Port Elizabeth.
A power-generation facility developer, Ipsa is listed on the JSE.
The company has been developing a 500MW mine-mouth power plant at a mine controlled by Elitheni Coal at Indwe, in the Eastern Cape.
Recently, Elitheni’s controlling shareholder, AIM-quoted Strategic Natural Resources, announced an increase in Elitheni’s proven and inferred coal reserves.
It has also commenced commercial operations on site at Indwe, with the blasting last week of its first extraction of coal for testing and local sales.
Ipsa and Strategic Natural Resources have agreed on outline terms for contractual arrangements to permit Ipsa to increase the overall scale of its coal-fired development and to accelerate the in-service date of some of its initial capacity.
This would be based on the use of Elitheni coal, not only at the mine mouth itself, but also in other parts of the Eastern Cape using rail transport to take Elitheni coal from Indwe to other sites.
To accelerate the construction of its initial coal-fired capacity, Ipsa is focusing on the installation of circulating fluidised bed (CFB) boilers of 75MW each.
These imported CFB boilers have a delivery and installation time of about two years to commissioning, compared with the four- to five-year lead time of the large-scale boilers favoured by Eskom and international developers, Ipsa said in the statement.
These faster times and Ipsa’s ability to source matching smaller steam turbines would allow the company to cut development time at Indwe and other Eastern Cape locations so its first units could be targeted for commissioning in 2010 as ”fast track” plants.
”The board of Ipsa believes that there is a significant competitive advantage for Ipsa in meeting South Africa’s chronic shortage of generation capacity by bringing significant additional capacity into service in South Africa in the shortest possible time frame to help alleviate the current power crisis in the region,” the company said.
The new programme was set at between 250MW and 300MW at two sites, with a further 400MW planned for Indwe in a second phase, and at least 300MW more planned for installation near East London.
At the moment, ”no significant on-grid capacity” existed in the Eastern Cape.
Ipsa owns and operates the gas-fired CHP plant in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal — the first independent power plant in South Africa.
It is also developing 1 600MW of combined-cycle gas turbine generation capacity to be based at the Coega Industrial Development Zone near Port Elizabeth. — Sapa