De Aar Solar Power, located in the Northern Cape began the project’s Energisation process on Sunday, 24 November. Due to the power in the De Aar area being on a radial feed from Eskom, power was lost to the area for almost thirteen hours. “The De Aar outage was scheduled between 05:30 and 19:00 this Sunday past, however we manage to restore the power an hour earlier than originally predicted,” said Savva Antoniadis, Project Manager for De Aar Solar Power.
This process is a major construction milestone for this Independent Power Producer and critical to the project, as this Energisation will allow for the export of electricity to the Eskom grid. The majority of work and tests was completed prior to the energisation process. The Energisation and ‘online’ tests verified what the completed cold commissioning tests had already confirmed.
Working on high voltage lines always poses a risk and for this reason the process included stringent Eskom Health and Safety standards, which were adhered to by all workers on site. Eskom fact managed the process and completed the commissioning on the newly build Eskom substation, however, the project’s team was responsible for the physical work.
“We are grateful to the Emthanjeni Municipality for informing the residents of De Aar prior to the power outage, of the process and power outages planned for last this week,” concluded Antoniadis.
