State-owned power utility Eskom plans to evaluate the remaining scope of work of the Ingula pumped-storage scheme to synchronise the project’s first unit to South Africa’s electricity grid as close to the original project timeframe as possible, Eskom group capital acting group executive Dan Marokane tells Engineering News.

The Ingula pumped-storage scheme is located in the Little Drakensberg mountain range, on the border between the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal.

“Eskom is considering all technological options to critically review the remaining scope of work to shorten the ten-month delay in the first synchronisation of the plant’s Unit 1, owing to the project’s outage after an accident,” Marokane says.

Engineering News reported in November last year that the accident in question saw a working platform in the incline high-pressure shaft, which connects the top dam to the powerhouse, failing, resulting in six fatalities and seven workers being injured.

The construction site was shut down under the Section 54 work stoppage order of the Mine Health and Safety Act, which was conditionally lifted at the end of April, Marokane says.

He adds that compliance by the utility with the Department of Mineral Resources’ conditions involved, for instance, not using two working platforms on top of each other and changing the anchor- ing system to ensure that the system is anchored externally to the interior of the incline high-pressure tunnel.

“Eskom will consider how it can accelerate the schedule and achieve an earlier commissioning of the units,” Marokane says, adding that postponing certain activities and design elements of the project can accelerate the current project schedule.

These activities will be resumed during the power plant’s first planned outage in two or three years.

Other project acceleration options include additional contractor resources on site to accelerate work in critical areas.

The first 333 MW unit will be commissioned during the second half of 2015, owing to the Section 54 work stoppage as a result of the accident in the project’s inclined high-pressure shaft, Marokane notes.

He highlights Eskom’s plans to use technological systems to assist in assessing the demand for certain construction activities at the site.

“Technology provides an opportunity to define the scope of some of the work more accurately, so we will still be able to complete the required work, but it may be done over smaller surface areas than initially anticipated.”

Marokane cites the use of technology to better assess current conditions within the tunnel, adding that work can be scheduled, according to assessments, to target critical areas requiring more attention, therefore, reducing the time needed to complete the overall project.