Black-outs this week, power constraints ahead

Tzaneen and surrounds must be aware that there is a strong possibility of load shedding this week.

South Africans will be faced with rolling black-outs this week after a 40-metre high coal silo collapsed at Eskom’s Majuba power station in Mpumalanga at midday on Saturday.

This comes after countrywide rolling black-outs were implemented from 08h00 to 20h:00 on Sunday.

Eskom is working around the clock to adapt operations at Majuba and believes it may be able to limit the load shedding to Monday night, Wednesday night and the whole of Thursday, provided nothing else goes wrong.

Slipping through the cracks:

Newly appointed Eskom chief executive Tshediso Matona  had a baptism of fire on Sunday when he had to explain the collapse at a media briefing. After being criticised for releasing a statement shortly before 23:00 on Saturday about a crack in the silo, without any mention that it had actually collapsed about ten hours earlier, Matona said there was “no foul play” and committed the organisation to transparency.

Matona said workers doing maintenance work on the conveyor belt saw coal leaking from about 30m up the 40m silo at 12:30 on Saturday. A crack was then detected and al staff were evacuated. At 13:12 the silo, storing 10 000 tons of coal, collapsed. Nobody was injured.

Eskom executives said it is only the second time ever that a silo of this kind has collapsed anywhere in the world. The silo is only 13 years old and is supposed to have a design life of 50 years. The last civil digital inspection was done in September last year and it was found to be in good condition.

Eskom, together with the Department of Labour, will investigate the cause and hopes to finalise the investigation in the next three months.

Early indications are that there was not enough rebar to strengthen the concrete structure and the extent of corrosion discovered after the collapse is of great concern. Samples will be taken as part of the investigation.

The other two silos are being fed from the collapsed one and they will also be properly inspected before taking on any further load.

When questioned, Eskom officials admitted that the coal stockyard at Majuba has been decommissioned earlier this year as “it has been ineffective for the last ten years”.

Eskom nevertheless said there was no relation to the silo collapse, which it considers an isolated incident. There is no indication of sabotage.

The whole failure was captured on camera, which will be of great value to the investigation.

Source: Moneyweb