Kriel Power Station Contact Details

Eskom publishes a direct number for Kriel Power Station on its own coal-fired power stations page. It is a station switchboard, not a customer service line, and that distinction decides whether you should be calling it at all.

Official contact details

• Station telephone: 017 615 2000
• Location: between the towns of Kriel and Ogies in Mpumalanga
• Eskom customer care, for anything about your own electricity supply: 08600 37 566
• Eskom toll-free crime line, for theft, vandalism or corruption: 0800 11 27 22

The station number is the right one for site business: a delivery, a contractor arrangement, an environmental or community query about the plant itself, or a media enquiry about the station. It is the wrong one for a power failure, a prepaid meter problem or an account query, none of which a generation site can see or resolve. Those go to customer care, and Eskom also runs a chatbot called Alfred and a USSD self-service channel for the same purpose.

What Kriel actually is

• Six units, each generating 500MW
• Installed capacity: 2 850MW
• Ramp rate: 30MW per hour
• Design efficiency at rated turbine maximum continuous rating: 34.99 percent
• Average availability over the last three years: 76.8 percent
• Average production over the last three years: 17 880 GWh

Those figures are Eskom own published numbers for the station. The availability figure is the one worth understanding: it means that on average roughly a quarter of the station capacity has not been available, which is the practical reality behind a coal fleet of this age.

Getting to the site

Kriel sits between Kriel and Ogies in the Mpumalanga coalfields, in a landscape of collieries and haul roads rather than ordinary suburban streets. This is a national key point: expect access control, and arrange a visit with a named contact in advance. Turning up at the gate without an appointment does not work.

Work and tenders

Employment and contracting at a power station are handled centrally, not at the gate. Eskom publishes its careers listings and its procurement process, including the tender process, vendor management and a formal complaint process for procurement, on its own website. Apply and tender through those, and treat any offer of a job or a contract at Kriel that requires a payment as fraudulent. That is exactly the sort of thing the crime line above exists for.

Reporting a problem in the area

Cable theft, illegal connections and vandalism around a power station affect supply for everyone nearby, and Eskom asks for these on the toll-free crime line on 0800 11 27 22 rather than at the station. Reports there can be made without giving your name.