South Africa’s power utility Eskom announced that Kusile power station’s Unit 1 reached its full 800MW load-generating capacity early March after its initial synchronization in December 2016, Engineering News reported.

The achievement brings the coal-fired station closer to commercial operation, as informed by Reuters.

When completed, Kusile will have generation capacity of 4,800MW and will be one of the largest coal-fired power stations in the world. All six units at Kusile are due to be finished in 2022.

Furthermore, according to Eskom, “the construction and commissioning activities on the remaining Kusile Unit 2 to Unit 6 continue to progress uninterruptedly with the drive to early completion.”

Kusile is the first power plant in Africa to implement clean fuel technology such as flue-gas desulphurization (FGD) – a state-of-the-art technology used to remove oxides of Sulphur‚ such as Sulphur dioxide‚ from exhaust flue gases in power plants that burn coal or oil.

This technology is fitted as an atmospheric emission abatement technology‚ in line with current international practice‚ to ensure compliance with air-quality standards‚ especially since the power station is located in a priority air shed area.

The station has a total planned operational life of 50 years.