JOHANNESBURG, March 20 (Reuters) – South African power utility Eskom said on Friday it has agreed with Alstom to terminate the French firm’s control and instrumentation (C&I) contract for the Kusile power station, which is under construction.
The cancellation, which is effective April 17th, would not delay the completion of the power plant, an Eskom spokesman said. The first unit of Kusile is due to come on line in the first half of 2017.
Kusile is one of three large-scale power plants Eskom is building to reduce chronic electricity shortages, but has been frequently delayed due to labour unrest and technical glitches.
Eskom’s new Medupi power station produced electricity earlier this month for the first time but its first unit will take three months before it cranks up to its installed capacity of 794 megawatts.
(Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by James Macharia and Joe Brock)
