Early 2007, Eskom announced that R50 billion had been budgeted for the building of Medupi Power

Station as part of the solution to the power crisis in South Africa. The 880 plus hectare site which lies due South of the Exxaro-owned Grootegeluk coal mine, will be used as the site to accomodate the power station. Eskom plans to operate the new power station for at least 50 years, during which Exxaro is under contract to supply 14.6MT of coal per year for 40 of these years. Six supercritical boilers were planned; each to power an 800MW turbine, totalling 4800MW of power, arguably the largest dry-cooled power station of its kind, thus far in the world. This is the first time that Eskom is implementing supercritical boilers which are able to operate at higher temperatures and pressures and will facilitate enhanced use of coal and water resources as well as reduced emissions. The first unit was planned to be complete by mid-2011. By March, 2011, the financial plan had escalated to over R100 billion and completion of the first unit had been shifted to mid-2012. Several crucial Project Management procedures were not applied expediently. The first unit is still incomplete with further increases in the required budget anticipated to be in the region of R120 billion. Complicating things further, work at Medupi was suspended on January 16th of 2013 due to striking metalworkers and Eskom began unsuccessful negotiations with striking workers. On 21st of January most stakeholders were convinced workers would return to work that week; a month later, however, workers had not returned, and the strike had become a hot spot of political drama. On 18th February, according to BDLive, contractors at Medupi eventually took matters into their own hands and gave their workers an ultimatum: either go back to work peacefully by the 20th; or face dismissal or disciplinary action. Eskom Finance Director, Paul OFlaherty reported on Monday that We failed last week to facilitate a deal and the contractors are now going this route. Unfortunately, the strike became a political debate as many groups of workers, not involved in the strike, were also locked out of the Medupi site by Eskom in an action to protect the work site. We applaud Eskom, the professional team and the contractors for handling the challenges on a project of this size and complexity.