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Cape Town – South Africans could be faced with severe outages for the week ahead after a coal silo collapsed at Eskom's Majuba power station in Mpumalanga on Sunday.
Energy analyst Chris Yelland took to Twitter on Sunday to bring clarity to the matter, explaining that the load shedding on Sunday was a “good plan”.
“I have [it] on impeccable authority that all 6 x 640 MW units at Eskom's Majuba power station are out of service today [Sunday], but Majuba has six hours of coal available in their bunkers if they were to run at full capacity tomorrow, or 12 hours at half capacity,” he tweeted.
- Are you affected? Send us your stories and photos.
- Cape Town residents can see the list here.
- Phone 08600 375 66 for the load shedding schedule or see the list here.
“So Eskom has chosen to run Majuba at half capacity (1800 MW) tomorrow (Monday) for 12 hours to get through the day and evening peak, after which Majuba will run out of coal, unless temporary bypass conveyors can be put in place to keep coal flowing to the boilers.
“It was good plan by Eskom to shut down Majuba fully with Stage 2 load shedding (2000 MW) on a Sunday, and keep some reserve coal for Monday.”
Eskom would bring mobile coal conveyer belts from other stations to Majuba as a temporary solution, but this would take time, Eskom spokesperson Andrew Etzinger said.
The City of Cape Town areas currently experiencing load shedding were Durbanville, Eversdal, Oakdale, Westhof, Bisschop Rd, Constantia, Piers Rd, Retreat, Rosmead ave and Hout Bay. Power was expected to be restored at 18:00 to areas currently affected by loadshedding on Sunday, it said on Twitter. To keep updated in Cape Town, see the City of Cape Town Twitter site.
Energy Blog posted this infographic on Twitter:
Confirmation from @chrisyelland that the silo has, in fact, totally collapsed #Majuba #Eskom pic.twitter.com/hNhvX6CrNN
— The Energy Blog (@energyblog_sa) November 2, 2014Please RT. Another pic of the collapsed coal silo and conveyors at #Eskom Majuba power station . Via @jozi117 pic.twitter.com/EW9gbtbiBf
— EE Publishers (@eepublishers) November 2, 2014The Democratic Alliance claimed poor maintenance and a lack of quality control caused the crack in the silo.
"This is a direct result of Eskom's deficient maintenance and planning and the public enterprise ministry's lack of quality control measures over Eskom," DA MP Natasha Michael said in a statement.
Michael intended writing to Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown to ask for a detailed timeline for maintenance on all the country's power stations, to avoid such failures.
Solidarity said Eskom had been warned about skills shortages and an exodus of experts from the company for years.
"Those warnings fell on deaf ears," the trade union's energy industry head Deon Reyneke said in a statement.
"The time has arrived for Eskom to answer for its reluctance to address these issues."
Weekend blues
Fin24 users expressed their dismay about the emergency load shedding.
Coenie Vermaak wrote: “So instead of a decent Sunday meal, [it’s] just braaivleis and wine!”
Alistar Williams wrote: “Massive power outage in Sydenham, Durban as well. No advance warning from Eskom or Ethekwini municipality and the call centre number just rings, so there's no knowing when power will be restored. Frustrating!”
Chris Lamprecht wrote: “Pretoria was also affected today... Approximately two hours without power this morning in Eastern Suburbs. But Tshwane does have a timetable on their website and the outage was more or less in line with the timetable...”
Errol Wagner wrote: “Why can't these people give warning in adequate time? Churches that rely on audio and visual aids were given no warning in George. Don't the people at Eskom actually think?”
Mark McPhail wrote: “We have no power in Eastern Cape and East London.”
Soccer fan Jeremy Flowerday was certainly not happy. "Hout Bay out. Half time UTD v city game."
Fezzi Dlephu wrote: "Eish guys, we didn't even get a warning. I'm at Alexandra JHB and load shedding has been on since this morning at about 08:00. No one is reassuring us like the estimated time when we are going to get power back."
Neil Graham wrote: "Menlyn Shopping Centre was effectively closed today. About 80 000 square metres of business unable to trade. Is it not time to bring legal action against Eskom and off set these damages?"
Apparently the latest load shedding was caused by some dude called Silo who fell into a generator while smoking crack #EskomLies
— Ben Trovato (@BTrovato) November 2, 2014
- Sapa and Fin24.
