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Project Bravo lurches into motion
Brendan Ryan
Posted: Thu, 10 Jul 2008

[miningmx.com] -- ESKOM has begun building Project Bravo, the second of its new coal-fired power stations aimed at meeting South Africa’s surging power needs. Although Eskom hasn’t officially given the go-ahead for Project Bravo, spokesperson Fani Zulu says terracing work on the site – which will have a maximum generating capacity of 4,800 Megawatts – started in June.

Zulu says Project Bravo is one of the ways Eskom will be able to cope over the short to medium term especially should there be any further delays or downsizing to CIC Energy’s (CIC) Mmamabula power station project in Botswana.

But Zulu adds the problems at Mmamabula could affect Eskom’s plans over the long term if Mmamabula is altered. Mmamabula is Project Delta on Eskom’s power supply programme and CIC Energy announced last week it was being forced to revise its construction plans for the station.

Bravo is situated just west of Witbank. It’s believed the station will be supplied with coal from Anglo Nyosi Coal’s proposed New Largo colliery, but Zulu wouldn’t confirm that. “Anglo Nyosi Coal is one of the contenders to supply Project Bravo but no contract has been signed yet for the coal supply to the power station,” Zulu says.

CIC president Greg Kinross says the decision to cut back had to be taken because the company couldn’t reach agreement for a turnkey engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract within the timeframe specified by the chosen contractor.

The reason was agreement couldn’t be reached on the allocation of the EPC risk in the project between CIC, Eskom and the Botswana Power Corporation.

Eskom will be the main consumer of power from Mmamabula, which was intended to generate 2,400MW from its first phase of three generating sets. A second phase would add a further three sets to bring Mmamabula up to the same capacity as Project Bravo. Due to that CIC couldn’t agree on the terms with the potential lenders who would fund the project. CIC had to have the EPC agreement in place in order to secure the manufacturing slots for long lead-time equipment – such as the boiler and turbines – which are core to the lengthy and complex construction schedule for such a power station.

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CIC has now lost those slots and must now look at building a smaller power plant for which it can still find the equipment, as well as a greater range of contractors able to undertake the work. Kinross adds: “We’re exploring alternative project configurations and will provide a full update shortly.”

Mmamabula was supposed to bring its first generating set on line a year after start up of the first generating set at Eskom’s Medupi station, currently being built near the town of Lephalale (Ellisras) in Limpopo.

Both projects had already been pushed back by two years from the original schedules, with the latest assessment being that Medupi should begin operating in 2012 and Mmamabula in 2013.