Johannesburg - At least four cities across the country are having to contend with power cuts on Sunday after a coal silo collapsed at Eskoms Majuba power station in Mpumalanga. Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth have been warned of rolling blackouts after Eskom lost 1800MW when the silo cracked and collapsed. The outages could last the rest of the week, Eskom warned. The Nelson Mandela Bay municipality in the Eastern Cape said it would cut power to areas for two hours at a time, according to its load-shedding schedule. The City of Tshwane announced power cuts between 08:00 to 22:00 on Sunday. Johannesburgs power utility, City Power had been asked to cut back on 460MW, it said in a statement. The Ekurhuleni municipality said it had been switching customers off since 08:30, according to the schedules on its website. The City of Cape Town received a similar request from the national power utility. Residents and suburbs may be affected at their indicated times, depending on the current demand from Eskom, it said. The silos collapse affected coal supplies to all six units at the power station, which had a total capacity of 3600MW, or about 10% of the countrys power needs. The silo ruptured or cracked and so employees were evacuated... and it just collapsed, Eskom spokesman Andrew Etzinger said. The conveyer belt systems, which feeds coal to the power station, were damaged and therefore we cant get coal into the power station. He said Eskom would bring mobile coal conveyer belts from other stations to Majuba as a temporary solution, but this would take time.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 13:03:21 +0000
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