- Last night, a conveyor belt feeding coal into the Medupi generation units failed, increasing the risk of loadshedding.
- This means the four generation units in service are not able to take in the requisite amount of coal to generate electricity.
- This puts further strain on Eskom’s ability to fully supply electricity over the next 24 hours.
Eskom as assured that they are working around the clock to repair the conveyor belt, which is expected to take the better part of the day, any further breakdown elsewhere in the generation fleet, would necessitate the implementation of Stage 2 loadshedding at short notice.
The new Medupi conveyor belt system has been prone to breakdowns since commissioning. In a similar incident earlier this year, Jan Oberholzer, Eskoms Chief Operations Officer told in Kieno Kammies on CapeTalk radio that the breakdowns is not as a result of shoddy work.
“This is the way the design has been done and this is the way it has been implemented. I have instructed our designers to redesign the coal-handling to ensure redundancy. You must remember, what we have at Medupi, we have exactly the same at Kusile. So if we’re experiencing the problem now at Medupi, for whatever reason, the chance that we’re going to have it at Kusile is very likely,” said Oberholzer.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
