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Four hundred of South Africa’s finest innovators, scientists, environmentalists, engineers and researchers shared some of the work that they do as part of Eskom’s Research, Testing and Development (RT&D) team with the media at Rosherville in the South of Johannesburg today.

The facility, Eskom’s Research and Innovation Centre (ERIC), houses the many projects and research work Eskom is doing to test and develop next-horizon technologies that support Eskom’s future strategic objectives as well as solving the energy challenges that we face as a country.

These projects range from  a solar PV plant, next generation water treatment, coal quality testing, smart grid technologies, smart metering, battery storage testing, lighting  technology, environmental management, first-of-its-kind fault detection systems to electric vehicle research and more.

Eskom Research, Testing and Development (RT&D) is dedicated to finding technology solutions that can be applied primarily within the company to ensure it fulfils its mandate of powering South Africa.

Some of the projects that were on display include:

Battery Energy Storage Test Facility

This facility is the only one of its kind in South Africa.  The objective is to compare different technologies and supplier products under identical South African conditions and to identify which of these products is suitable for Eskom’s future needs for energy storage. These needs have been primarily defined as load shifting and for the integration of renewable energy sources into the grid.  Once the comparative testing has been carried out, it is intended that the batteries are used as an operational facility, either at Rosherville, or elsewhere in the field, under actual operating conditions. This will allow for continual research into battery behaviour.

James Watts Metering Laboratory

The laboratory has capabilities to test the reliability and functionality of all types of electricity metering equipment used within Eskom (including smart meters, prepaid meters, split meters, etc.). The laboratory work is interlinked with research into advanced metering systems that can enable improved revenue collection and reduce non-technical losses (due to meter tampering, bypassing, etc.).

The laboratory supports Group Technology in evaluating new technologies before deployment into Eskom and as such RT&D resources have actively contributed into the development of the Eskom Smart Prepaid Metering Specification and the technical adjudication of solutions submitted in response to the subsequent tender enquiry.

Visualisation laboratory and Integration laboratory

The Visualisation laboratory has the capability of demonstrating the power of Grid Situational Awareness on a live system. The system can show the voltage profiles of the corridors, and by representing them in a colour coded gradient, one can visually analyse the status of the network at a glance. The system can also demonstrate how fire alerts from the Advanced Fire Information System can be analysed and interpreted to distinguish fires that pose a threat on a line with regard to fire flash overs and subsequent network disruptions. We are also able to show the potential capability of cloud cover and their renewable impact.

Other research includes smart meter appliance control using web based geographic information system view that can be used during system constraints for load limiting, as well as storm clustering and the potential of knowing a storms characteristics and anticipating the threat to a line.

Metallographic Replica Laboratory

This is where Metallographic Replicas are being analysed. A Metallographic replica is a non-destructive tool that allows engineers to assess the condition of a component.  It forms part of the condition monitoring techniques for components operating at high temperature and high pressure. These replicas are important for base-line and progressive inspection philosophy of Eskom power plants components.

QEMSCAN Mineralogical Analysis

Eskom is the first power utility in the world to purchase QEMSCAN.  A QEMSCAN is a quantitative scanning electron microscope-based system configured to automatically determine the mineralogical characteristics of coal, ash and clinker samples.  It has been used to, amongst others, evaluate Eskom’s coal feedstocks, fly ash, coarse ash, local and international coals, and slag deposits, analyse RO (Reverse Osmosis) membranes at water treatment plants, integrity of fabric filter bags, analysis of concrete materials and Koeberg condenser tubes.

Eutectic Freeze Crystallisation Plant

The water-related research undertaken at RT&D will for the next five years investigate and demonstrate alternative water treatment technologies to recover as much of the waste water as possible for re-use. Eutectic freeze crystallisation is a new technology for water treatment and purification and is based on the principle that when water freezes or the temperature drops sufficiently, salts and impurities are excluded from the water matrix.  The salt is removed and the temperature of the water is restored to ambient. This results in a clean water and a dry salt cake which is much cheaper to manage than saline slurries. The facility currently being constructed at Rosherville will act a training platform and a demonstration plant for future water recoveries.

Photo-voltaic Plant

The plant comprises four sections of 100kWp of installed capacity each. This one of a kind PV plant utilizes ground mounted, multi-configuration PV systems comprising of crystalline and thin-film technologies.  Aspirations for this PV plant is to understand PV technology, its performance and output in the outdoor conditions in order to give the Eskom Renewables Business Unit informed decisions for future installations.

Coal Combustion Rig (Drop Tube Furnace)

A Drop Tube Furnace is a laboratory-scale furnace designed to simulate the important conditions of temperature, residence time and oxidising environment within a pulverised fuel furnace, providing useful combustion data not available from laboratory. The combustion model allows the user to make an engineering assessment of performance and emissions based on the interaction between a particular fuel (solid, liquid or gaseous) and furnace hardware. The model allows prediction of several parameters for pulverised fuel, liquid and gas-fired furnaces.

Swan Edison Illumination Laboratory

The illumination laboratory is a facility where the performance of various lamps and luminaires are tested and verified. It is one of few laboratories in South Africa that can test all the colour parameters of lamps and luminaires. It is also the only facility that has all the state of art instruments available to do testing, research and development under one roof. Our direct links to Eskom Divisions are through Integrated Demand Management (IDM), both for IDM projects and the roll-out of energy efficiency programmes such as the Residential Mass Rollout and Compact Florescent Lamps Rollout as well as to the Internal Energy Efficiency programme (projects within Generation and Transmission for lighting designs and installations). Our aim is to verify and ensure that all the illumination products that Eskom install and purchase is of good quality and that it will give the best illumination where installed, and more importantly that it will meet the Occupational, Health and Safety (OHS) Act requirements.

Issued by Eskom