Explosion At Medupi Power Station plunges SA into darkness
Eskom has announced that there was an explosion at Unit four generator at the Medupi power station in Lephalale, Limpopo on Monday prompting the power utility to implement load-reduction in several provinces.
Affected provinces include Limpopo, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, North West, Free State and Mpumalanga.
The power utility says no injuries have been reported and all employees at the plant have been accounted for, however, emergency services have attended to seven employees for shock.
In a statement, Eskom says Unit four has been on a short-term outage when the incident occurred and all the work on the unit has been suspended with immediate effect. Pindula News presents Eskom statement on the explosion.
Medupi Unit 4 generator failure
Monday, 09 August 2021: Eskom wishes to inform the public that Unit 4 of Medupi Power Station experienced an explosion on the Unit 4 generator at approximately 22h50 on 08 August. The incident is suspected to have resulted in Unit 5 tripping.
No injuries have been reported and all employees and contractors have been accounted for. Emergency services attended to seven colleagues requiring treatment for shock. Eskom will continue to provide support to the employees who might have been affected by the incident through its Employee Assistance Programme (EAP).
Unit 4 was on a short-term outage (since 06 August) when the incident occurred, and all work on the unit was suspended with immediate effect. This included the suspension of all permits to work on the plant until further notice. The area was secured and once it has been cleared by the Fire Chief and resident engineers; inspections and assessments will begin to determine the cause of the incident and extent of the damage caused.
Preparation for the return to service of Medupi Unit 5 is currently in progress.
Investigations are underway into the cause of the incident and Eskom will update the public on developments, as well as to what extent this unfortunate incident will impact the national electricity grid.
The utility says it is battling to keep up with increased equipment failure caused by overloading, costing millions to repair.
Since 2018, ESKOM has been implementing power rationing due to the limited quantity of power the utility is generating.
–-Pindula
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