The Road to a Just Energy Transition in South Africa

Managing change Thevan Pillay, acting general manager of Komati power station, inside the coal-fired plant. The last generation unit was shut down in October 2022. Now the giant machines are eerily silent and footsteps echo in the buildings that are empty of workers. Photo: Paul Botes

Managing change Thevan Pillay, general manager of Komati Power Station, inside the coal-fired plant. The last generation unit was shut down in October 2022. Now the giant machines are eerily silent and footsteps echo in the buildings that are empty of workers. Photo: Paul Botes

The tiny team that’s steering the JET flagship

What happens to the people who work at a coal power station when it is decommissioned and repurposed for renewable energy? They throw themselves into learning a whole new range of skills

SHAUN SMILLIE

When Komati Power Station’s unit nine fell silent in October 2022 no glasses were raised and nothing was said to mark the moment.

Emotions ran high that day, recalls acting general manager of the plant, Thevan Pillay.

In its heyday Komati burned through 12,000 tonnes of coal a day and fed 1,000MW of electricity into the national grid. Built half a century ago, the station sits in the heart of South Africa’s power belt that cuts through a swath of central Mpumalanga province.

Now Komati has reached the end of its life and is going through a decommissioning process.

Many of Eskom’s staff moved to other power stations. For the communities surrounding the station, its closure was hard felt especially for those who relied on the plant directly or indirectly for work.

But the power station isn’t dead yet.

In the shadow of its giant cooling towers some of the employees who tearfully watched generation unit nine’s shutdown are now part of a workforce that provides a peek into a future where coal is no longer king and old power stations take their place in a low-carbon economy.

They are trying their hand at new projects, some of which are totally left-field of traditional coal-fired energy production. One even involves farming fish.

Fishing expedition Jenny Prinsloo feeds a tank of tilapia that is part of an aquaponics pilot project. The fish droppings are used to fertilise a vegetable garden via a filter system that’s powered by solar panels. Photo: Paul Botes

A new leaf Bheki Nkabinde, a former security guard, ensures plants are being irrigated correctly, feeds the fish and is working to find which vegetables grow best. ‘So far it’s the lettuce’, he says. Photo: Paul Botes

Acid tests Emmanuel Manyaga (right) and Elvis Tjiana test the water from the aquaponic system to maintain the correct PH balance. Photo: Paul Botes

Fresh produce A chef at Komati power station picks fresh lettuce leaves. The aquaponics project has been expanded due to the success of the pilot. Photo: Paul Botes

‘We are learning as we go along,’ admits Jenny Prinsloo, who leads the aquaponics project. ’None of us knew a lot about this.’

She explains how it all works. ‘So the tilapia do their business in the water, then it moves through the filter system, then is used to fertilise the plants and is pumped back into the tanks for the fish.’

Prinsloo’s job at the power station is risk management and she admits she has never grown vegetables before.

The closed system is powered by solar panels.

Bheki Nkabinde, a community volunteer attached to the programme is experimenting on what vegetables fare best on this part of the Highveld. ‘So far that is the lettuce,’ he says.

The plan is to expand the project and, when it is up and running, hand it over to the local community. Small businesses will run different components from the growing of the vegetables to the fish farming.

Other projects happening at the power plant are more in line with power generation.

Banks of photovoltaic panels that will occupy land around the power plant are being assembled and built. Together with this will be 150MW of battery energy storage.

Into the light Shoki Mbowane and Mazz Scott, who both worked in Komati’s coal department before the station was shut down, are now learning to install solar panels. Photo: Paul Botes

Mazz Scott and Shoki Mbowane once worked in the station’s coal department, now they have signed up for the construction reskilling programme. They are learning to install PV panels.

‘After training we will be able to install them on our roofs ourselves,’ laughs Mbowane. Both are enjoying learning new skills, but for Scott, there is still a hint of nostalgia for the old days of just two-and-a-half years ago - even the late nights when she had to rush to the station after one of the units had tripped.

Nick Singh, head of the Smart Group Centre of Excellence at Eskom Research, Testing and Development, in a container filled with batteries and inverters. These are connected to solar panels attached to the outside of the container (see image below). These mobile mini power stations can be installed in remote areas that have no electricity infrastructure to provide power to households. Photos: Paul Botes

Not far from where those silent generating units now stand is an assembly line of mini power stations that, true to the just energy transition, is bringing green electricity to the most remote parts of South Africa.

These power units are containerised micro grids that contain lithium batteries that are charged by solar panels. Eskom is using them to electrify hard-to-reach communities.

At Swartkopdam, an off-the-grid settlement 150km from Upington in the Northern Cape, a micro grid provides electricity to 39 houses.

Plugging the community into the national grid through transmission lines running hundreds of kilometres would have cost in excess of R250-million.

‘We are looking at different applications where we could make them bigger or smaller,’ explains Pillay.

In the future other projects might be rolled out to test if they will work. There has been a suggestion to grow hemp on the land surrounding the station. Another idea is to turn Komati into a museum where visitors will be able to see an old power station up close.

What works might be rolled out to other sites as coal-powered stations across the power belt close as they reach their end of life.

Watchdog Thulani Nkosi, a community leader who acts as a liaison between Eskom and the communities surrounding Komati, says many people left the area after the station closed and many of those who remain live in desperation. Some residents have found jobs at nearby coal mines while a few others have retained their jobs at Komati. Photo: Paul Botes

The repurposing project at Komati started too late, the Presidential Climate Commission found in a report on Komati in 2023. The decommissioning process started before Eskom established a Just Energy Transition office in 2020 and before the government adopted the Just Transition Framework in 2022.

A process like this should ideally be planned for about eight years, Pillay told a group of journalists in February. Komati did not have that luxury.

Despite the shortcomings, the commission’s report noted that 'there is enough agency and will in and around Komati to see real progress in the future, at an imaginable scale'.

‘Komati is going to be the flagship and, as it has always been, we will be the guinea pigs,’ says Pillay.

Skills training: A welder makes measurements for a solar panel project. One of the pilot projects at Komati will be a welding school where trainees are taught specialist welding techniques. Photo: Paul Botes