Karusa &
Soetwater
Eskom substation electrical works for 294 MW of wind power.
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147 MW
Karusa wind farm
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147 MW
Soetwater wind farm
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294 MW
Combined to grid
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2
Eskom substations
The Karoo, at 06:57.
Two wind farms in the Northern Cape — Karusa and Soetwater — 147 MW each, 294 MW between them. A WBHO / Enel project development.
Xnovest Africa was appointed on the Eskom substations: the electrical infrastructure that takes what the turbines generate and puts it onto the national grid.
A nacelle is the size of a house.
It is difficult to convey the scale of a modern turbine until one is standing on the ground next to a bakkie. The hub alone dwarfs a double-cab.
That scale runs all the way through the electrical scope: the cable, the terminations, the switchgear and the protection all have to match what the machines above them produce.
Substations, from foundation to energised.
Monitoring and control cables. AC and DC cabling. Terminations and testing. Across both Eskom substations, serving Karusa (147 MW) and Soetwater (147 MW).
Gantries, structures and equipment plinths set out and installed; cable routes established; and every core landed, labelled and tested.
Kilometres of cable, one core at a time.
Trenches set out and dressed, cable pulled by hand where machines could not reach, and routes converging on the control building in the pattern that will define the substation for the next forty years.
Cold, wind, fog and dust are the working conditions in that part of the Karoo. The programme does not adjust for them.
Where the job is actually won.
Anyone can pull cable. The difference between a substation that commissions cleanly and one that fights you for a month is in the terminations: ferruled, labelled, torqued, and recorded.
These are our own photographs of our own work. We put them on the website for the same reason we take them on site.
The control building goes live.
Protection panels populated, tested and commissioned. The point at which two years of civils, steel and cable becomes 294 MW on the grid.
Muddy boots, on time.
Xnovest engineers, electricians and project managers on site for the duration. In-house resources — the same people who do the design reviews were the people standing in the trench.
The short version.
Everything on this page is drawn from our own project photography and the project record as published in our company profile.
- Client / developer
- WBHO / Enel
- Asset owner
- Eskom substations
- Location
- Northern Cape, South Africa
- Karusa wind farm
- 147 MW
- Soetwater wind farm
- 147 MW
- Combined capacity
- 294 MW
- Xnovest scope
- Monitoring & control cables, AC and DC cabling, terminations and testing
Have something at this scale?
Substations, reticulation, terminations and testing — with the engineering, the electricians and the project management in one organisation.