ABB to Help Eskom with Ingula Project

ABB was awarded a $23-million contract with South Africa’s power utility Eskom to supply an electrical balance of plant (eBoP) for its Ingula pumped storage project. ABB’s Global Power Generation Business Head Franz-Josef Mengede said that the project would generate a significant amount of hydropower to help meet the country’s energy demand.

The 1,300 MW hydropower plant will be patched into the South African grid by 2014, and is anticipated to pump an additional 40,000 MW into the grid by 2025. ABB will supply the service and auxiliary transformers, dry-type distribution transformers, and medium- and low-voltage switchgears. The upper reservoir will have a total capacity of 22.6 million cubic meters and an active storage of 19.3-million cubic meters, while the lower reservoir will have a 26.3-million cubic meters capacity and active storage of 21.9 million cubic meters.

During times of peak energy consumption, water will be released from the upper reservoir through the pump turbines to the lower reservoir to generate electricity. When energy consumption is low, the process will be reversed, and water will be pumped from the lower to the upper reservoir.

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