State-owned power utility Eskom has announced that its Unit 3 at Medupi power station is up and running following a 75-day outage to repair major design defects.

The unit has now reached its full generation capacity of 793 MW.

Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer explains that the major focus of the outage was to implement the technically agreed solutions for the boiler issues that hobbled the performance of the unit; these being the boiler plant modifications of the reheater spray flow, pulse jet fabric filter plant, gas air heater, milling plant, duct erosion and dust arrestors.

The unit is currently undergoing optimisation and performance testing, prior to conducting boiler performance verification tests, which require inspections and equipment tests to be conducted after 2 500 hours of operation, to verify the success of the modifications.

Eskom is implementing similar modifications on Unit 6 at the power station, which will be followed by repair works on Unit 1 starting later this month.

Further, Unit 4 at the power station will be taken off the grid in July for similar modifications, while Units 2 and 5 will be out for repairs in August and November, respectively.